[mattparcens]

Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially involuntary medical treatments on people, particularly not onto people for whom the benefit is likely of very little marginal value.

The cognitive load could be built into the "vaccine card" anyway - I have a driver's license with a couple of extra checkboxes showing that I need corrective lenses and am authorized to drive a motorcycle, but most people need only be concerned that the card itself exists.

[PragmaticPulp]

> Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially involuntary medical treatments on people,

FYI: The current legislation requires weekly testing or proof of vaccination, but it doesn't actually impose the vaccine on anyone who doesn't want it.

[flybrand]

Which employers are taking as a green flag to terminate those who don’t get it. Maybe legally wrong, maybe they get compensated in a few years.

[giantg2]

Yep my employer has said they will terminate the unvaccinated (limited medical and religious exceptions excluded).

[BEEdwards]

Which is a move the mostly vaccinated are fine with, because we're really done with the idiocy.

Fuck off and die somewhere else, seems to be the general sentiment of people I know.

[decremental]

That doesn't sound insane at all. Where can I sign up for Team Psychopath? I need to hurry as I'm told patience is wearing thin.

[Tcepsa]

It is my understanding that the latest executive orders do require vaccination of US federal employees and contractors; other employers may offer weekly testing as an alternative. So I believe that, if you are a federal employee or contractor, you do in fact have to choose between getting vaccinated or keeping your job. (Or do you consider allowing people to choose to quit rather than get vaccinated sufficient flexibility to not be an "imposition"?)

[Spooky23]

> Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially involuntary medical treatments on people, particularly not onto people for whom the benefit is likely of very little marginal value.

No, this is just not correct. Compulsory vaccination has been a thing for hundreds of years.

[simonh]

Nobody has a full system of vaccination status cards and databases. There are just too many people who will avoid vaccination at the slightest excuse. We're in a war and every day of delay costs thousands, or tens of thousands of lives.

We need simple rules that we can apply on a massive scale quickly. The US is a country where more than half of people can't work out if a 1/3 pound burger is bigger or smaller than a 1/4 pound burger.

[mattparcens]

No one said anything about multiple cards, nor about any databases whatsoever.

Single-mindedness is not a rationale for imposing medical treatment on people.

I'll circle back to my driver's license analogy - the bouncer does not need to know that I was docked 3 points from my driving test for failing to signal - he only needs to know that some granting authority, with expertise in the realm being licensed, granted me the license. (or that I'm old enough to enter the bar, etc.)

[bbulkow]

'Mandatory medical treatment' sounds like a big deal, but the tragedy of the commons happens with every vaccine. No one benefits much from their own vaccination, we all benefit must from others'. Which is why vaccinations almost always have a requirement, or they don't work (cf flu, cf hpv).

When 1500 Americans are dying every day of a preventable disease, it is absolutely reasonable to take feasibility of enforcement into account. And enforcement has to be done where the greatest risk of spreading occurs. People might not like getting carded at a restaurant, but there is a point where lots of people are dying and it makes sense, right? We card for alcohol, we card for driving, and those we do every day.

I would think someone who tested positive should be able to get a ca state qr code. It seems the science supports that. Having each validator check that the test is the right test, and the doctor and hospital exist, seems not feasible, but getting a state qr code - then using that at the point of enforcement - seems practical.

[mattparcens]

I largely agree with most everything that you said, regarding enforcement pragmatism and the like.

But I must remind that, at least in this particular conversation, we're talking about people who've just had the illness in question. We don't know how many of the 1,500/day are people who have previously contracted the illness or else contracted the illness from someone else who previously caught the illness, but in all likelihood the proportion of such cases is likely very low. So referencing the 1,500/day likely has very little relevance to a discussion of natural immunity.

[wpietri]

Cognitive load is the mediating resource. It doesn't on its own justify it, yes. The justification comes from saving lives in a global pandemic. As you can see here and elsewhere, people complain endlessly about shifting recommendations; they reduce trust. That's a very strong incentive to pick an approach and stick with it until the benefit of changing things again becomes very large.

And yes, I agree that next time we do this, we should build it into the card. And better, that card should be digital, so that it can adapt as science discovers more as the pandemic goes on. But what we had was a vaccine, slips of paper, and a lot of questions.

[throwaway894345]

In my experience talking with people, trust is reduced a lot more when politicians and the media fixate on a vaccine and largely ignore natural immunity. A lot of people are perceiving this as authoritarian and punitive (governments want to compel citizens to receive an unnecessary injection) which burns a lot more trust than "good news! we've learned that natural immunity is sufficient to earn privileges that were previously reserved for the vaccinated!".

> Cognitive load is the mediating resource. It doesn't on its own justify it, yes. The justification comes from saving lives in a global pandemic

I specifically don't see how your hypothesis works: "if we allow for natural immunity, it will confuse people and some of them will die". Presumably the failure mode is that some of the "bouncers" of society are too dumb to understand "vaccine OR natural immunity" and will thus reject more people than necessary (either the vaccinated or the naturally immune) and thus our risk of spread will be slightly reduced at the expense of our liberties. In any case, I have a hard time imagining large failure rates here, and the risk associated with any given error is very small (a given failure doesn't significantly increase anyone's risk of serious illness or death).