Vaccines cut severity of disease and thus the societal burden of infection. While I agree these measures are potentially draconian it's wrong to say they convey no benefit.
Very true. Vaccines have helped in great measure. OTOH, there are other forces at play. The very existence of covid waves that come and recede much faster than the increase in the vaccination rate should be an indication that vaccines, while very helpful, are not the end all of covid pushback mechanisms. For example in US delta is receding after a couple months of mayhem. R is estimated <1 for most of the states, see https://covidestim.org.
There is a point after which the effect of human measures becomes marginal. If anything because most people would have been already exposed to covid, with or without vaccines. I can't say whether we've passed that point or not, but OTOH the draconians have not made their case either. What concrete benefit do people expect from an additional 10% of the population being forced to vaccinate?
Long term there are concerns of vaccine escape. Pfizer CEO raised them recently, it's not just the 5G conspiracists. A new strain emerges for which vaccines aren't that helpful against severe complications. Some people, myself included (I am vaccinated thank you very much) are concerned that creating a population with immune monoculture is likely to result in strains bypassing the monoculture. The nightmare scenario is the emergence of a strain for which the vaccines are a net negative. Hopefully nothing terrible happens. But we don't know. Nobody knows. Perhaps we should not be placing all our eggs in the same basket, e.g. not (force) vaccinate everyone against the exact same protein.
Given that there are many nurses protesting vaccine mandates, it could be that putting such mandates in place will lead to a lot of them quitting, which could make the hospital system less "intact" and resilient.
The system is failing under the weight of its own policies.
Underpaying and understaffing nurses
Failing to provide ppe
And a whole slew of covid related policies that deny folks “non critical “ care like cancer treatment and surgery.
I mean my friends couldn’t even get in to see their pcp for 2 weeks for an illness that presented with fever, finally gave up and hit the er. Vaccines are nice but they won’t fix this
Generally speaking, worst case scenario notwithstanding, adults should get vaccinated (1) for their own good. OTOH, part of being adult in a free society is making choices for oneself, good or bad. We have plenty of bad choices leading to heavy costs in the medical system. Obesity and intense end-of-life procedures (that doctors themselves eschew by a large margin) come to mind. Or skiing, or riding a motorcycle down the freeway. Or sexual promiscuity. Sadly, some of these choices strongly overlap with susceptibility to covid (2). Do we really want to open the can of worms of blaming individual patients for overall medical system costs? That's a heavy load.
The nurse enters the ER triage room. 'Smoker? Exercise 2 hours a day? Fast food in the past 2 weeks? Drink beer? BMI over 30? Diabetes? Below average safe driver? Cardiac problems in the family?'. God forbid you tick the wrong answer on any of these questions, you are now an undesirable straining the hospital system and we should righteously kick you to the curb to squirm in your earned misery. The 'preexisting conditions' rubric in American medical system is already dark, not sure we want to push harder in the wrong direction.
Most of us are in favor of helping those in need. See the push for single payer health care system. Maybe there is hope.
(2) Cue in the 'obesity is not a choice' crowd. Whatever we think the causes are, it was an order of magnitude less of a problem 50 years ago, and I know for a fact that I often have a poor diet and I am unable to incorporate enough physical movement in my own daily routine. So there.
PS. As you are reaching for the flamethrower, try save a bit of that energy to craft a 'getting vaccinated is good for you and your loved ones' message coming from a place of care and not smug vindictive superiority. <3
You're right to insist on looking at cost and benefit. Vaccines have indeed saved lives.
Problem is that the emergency authorization means that we don't yet know what the cost is aside from the adverse reactions. The latter are described as 'rare' by journalists who prefer that term to quoting freely available data which changes week by week as in the case of boys who we now know suffer x6 risk of myocarditis than the same risk if they contract Covid. Is there a further risk down the road? A number of peer-reviewed papers have pointed out that this cannot be ruled out. When the papers dutifully write 'very unlikely' we know we're looking at a lottery with unknown odds.
Well said, but I think the problem we're fighting is that people don't view these as vaccines so much as preventive treatment now. The Israel, Malta, and Iceland cases with very high vaccination rates and growing number of hospitalizations means we need to acknowledge that these things don't confer immunity, but that their benefit is still tangible and real in that it confers better outcomes to those that do contract the disease.
> benefit is still tangible and real in that it confers better outcomes to those that do contract the disease
The thing is that a treatment having real and tangible benefits is not an adequate justification for the state imposing that treatment by force.
And yes, laws requiring vaccine passports for participation in public life are a use of state force. If the police stop you doing something, that means the state is using force to stop you doing that thing. If the state mandates that businesses require papers under the threat of fines or losing their business license, that's also an application of force on the part of the state.
Informed consent has been the bedrock of medical ethics for the past 70 years and it would be unwise to throw away this principle just to impose a preventative treatment that might be mildly good for people.
People are right to point out that the push for vaccine passports --- because the vaccines are merely preventative individual therapies --- is a gravely concerning break with nearly a century of tradition and law. In general, we don't mandate things merely because they're good for people, and it would be extremely dangerous to start doing that in general.
Look: elsewhere, people have suggested that I'm claiming that because the vaccines can't stop the spread, they have no benefit. That's not true. They do seem beneficial. Lots of things are beneficial. Vitamin D deficiency, for example, is common and vitamin D supplementation would benefit most people. Do we require that people present evidence of vitamin D supplementation to eat at restaurants? No, of course not! That's an individual medical decision.
The whole point of mandating traditional vaccines is that eradicating a disease has huge positive externalities, ones large enough to justify public health measures --- like vaccine requirements for admission into schools --- that would ordinarily fail on civil liberties grounds. COVID vaccines simply do not have the same large positive externalities. Yes, they might be good for you, but this fact alone does not justify coercive state action.
COVID vaccines are not like the vaccines that have been mandated for a long time in public schools and at border crossings. COVID vaccines are non-sterilizing. The previous vaccines were sterilizing. These are two completely different categories of medical tools, and pointing out that we've done thing X with previous vaccines is not an argument that we should do thing X with respect to COVID vaccines.
There is a point after which the effect of human measures becomes marginal. If anything because most people would have been already exposed to covid, with or without vaccines. I can't say whether we've passed that point or not, but OTOH the draconians have not made their case either. What concrete benefit do people expect from an additional 10% of the population being forced to vaccinate?
Long term there are concerns of vaccine escape. Pfizer CEO raised them recently, it's not just the 5G conspiracists. A new strain emerges for which vaccines aren't that helpful against severe complications. Some people, myself included (I am vaccinated thank you very much) are concerned that creating a population with immune monoculture is likely to result in strains bypassing the monoculture. The nightmare scenario is the emergence of a strain for which the vaccines are a net negative. Hopefully nothing terrible happens. But we don't know. Nobody knows. Perhaps we should not be placing all our eggs in the same basket, e.g. not (force) vaccinate everyone against the exact same protein.