[throwawaylinux]

> Also not trivial, given the legitimate hunger and compulsion someone with an overeating problem may have after suffering with it for years.

Yeah but you could just mandate it. Force them to eat small amounts. Fire them from their jobs, prevent them from traveling, and lock them out of civil society if they do not comply. Make them submit to weekly weigh-ins.

They wouldn't like it of course, but neither do the people being coerced into taking vaccines. Point is it's for the greater good, and if reducing their load on the healthcare system saves just one life, it all will have been worth it. Right? I mean while we're just here completely making up values and cost/benefit out of thin air, we can mandate pretty much anything.

[snovv_crash]

Being fat isn't contagious. While it does increase medical load, it doesn't cause the people you meet at the restaurant to also increase medical load.

We aren't stopping restaurant and party access as some kind of punishment for the unvaxxed. It's because this is one of the major vectors for disease transmission.

[throwawaylinux]

> Being fat isn't contagious.

But it does tend to result in worse outcomes when you catch covid, which you can when you go eat at a restaurant. From the vaccinated patrons who can still transmit it.

> it doesn't cause the people you meet at the restaurant to also increase medical load.

The vaccinated can contract covid and can transmit it to other vaccinated though. So this can't be the reason to ban unvaccinated, because allowing the vaccinated to restaurants will also increase medical load.

> We aren't stopping restaurant and party access as some kind of punishment for the unvaxxed.

Oh? It sort of seemed like it was since the science on natural immunity was being ignored.

> It's because this is one of the major vectors for disease transmission.

[lenkite]

> Being fat isn't contagious.

Being vaccinated doesn't mean you are not contagious.

[sangnoir]

The probabilities are very different, and that compounds when infections are exponential.

Your argument could equally apply to DUIs:"Driving sober doesn't mean you won't be involved in an accident" - sure, but the likelihood is lowered by a measurable amount.

[throwawaylinux]

> The probabilities are very different, and that compounds when infections are exponential.

So? What are the numbers? You seem to have it all figured out, so all I'm asking is how the situations are different, and how exactly you arrived at the conclusion that one merited forced medical procedures and the other did not, based on those numbers.

Handwaving about more or different doesn't really cut it because I want clear, unambiguous hard criteria and step by step reasoning for why one particular set of numbers justifies this serious step and another does not.

[LudvigVanHassen]

The probability being very different argument above is based in massaged data; data fit to a narrative.

The narrative wants you to trust it and set aside such petty questioning! "The science" will prevail! The elites no better! How dare you ask for specifics, a practical dataset and explanations. You might be labeled a anti-vaxxer over such things! /sarcasm

[dragonwriter]

> Being vaccinated doesn't mean you are not contagious.

Being vaccinated reduces contagion (with known variants other than Delta, it reduces probability of contagious infection, intensity (viral load) of contagious infection, and duration of contagious infection; with Delta it does the first and third.

[billycorben2]

This article is about previous infection.

Is there data comparing previous infection to vaccine in terms of contagious properties listed above?

[tsimionescu]

You're again misrepresenting the situation. Taking the vaccine is a 2 x 30 minute process (maybe adding 3-4 sick days with mild fever and soreness, to be fair). Losing weight after being overweight/obese is something that you need to do every second of every day for the rest of your life.

Also, people who chose not to get vaccinated chose to expose others to their disease. People who chose not to lose weight hurt no one but themselves.

The amount of burden you put on someone when you make them take the vaccine is nothing like the amount of burden you put on someone when you make them lose weight. The risks for you if I don't get vaccinated is high, the risk for you if I remain overweight/obese is 0. So, one is an acceptable compulsion, the other is not. How is this so hard to understand?

You can also view it the other way around: there is no compulsion or punishment for those who don't get vaccinated. The government can and must mandate a quarantine for everyone. However, since some people are immune, they are exempted from this quarantine.

[throwawaylinux]

I think you're just doing everything you can to avoid acknowledging any similarities in the situations. The two situations are not exactly identical in every way of course. But getting bogged down in this minutiae with these construction of rules is missing the point, and such precise rules have never been a feature of covid policies.

Mandating overweight people lose weight would benefit their own health and it would take pressure of the healthcare system. Pretty straightforward analogy.

[tsimionescu]

No, I am pointing out the 2 most relevant differences. You are doing your best to ignore those and look at the similarities.

The government, in practice, can only issue mandates and bans that are relatively easy to follow, and extremely urgent. That's why banning radioactive material is easy and has wide support, but banning alcohol or tobacco is not.

While the government is extremely corrupt and oligarchic, it's still not a dictatorship that can actually up and decide to ban dancing on some idiot's whim.

[throwawaylinux]

They aren't really relevant to the issue though. The matter at hand is that mandating overweight people lose weight would improve their health outcomes and take pressure of the medical system, improving helath outcomes for others as well. This is the justification for vaccine mandates and coercion.

[tsimionescu]

I've explained this enough, you're obviously arguing in bad faith at this point.

[Dylan16807]

And then that justification is weighed against the difficulty and invasiveness of implementation.

[throwawaylinux]

I've never seen that weighing or justified anywhere. Do you have any sources on that?

Mandating overweight people lose weight is not more invasive than mandating people undergo unwanted medical procedures. Forced medical procedures are actually an incredibly serious and problematic issue with a long and dark history.

The problem I have is not any one particular procedure, it is the idea of coercion, and the bullying and excluding of people (disproportionately disadvantaged, non-white, etc too, I might add).

[heavyset_go]

The load on the medical system from obesity is largely predictable and stable. It's no comparison to how COVID overwhelms the medical system.

Nobody is going without necessary surgery or treatment because some other people eat too much food from McDonald's.

[refurb]

Healthcare spending is $X. When obesity related illnesses cost $Y, that means only $X-$Y is leftover to pay for the remaining care.

[tshaddox]

But now you’re back at the original comparison of one or two quick injections versus constant monitoring of meals or weigh-ins.

[maneesh]

I mean... I created a wearable device[0] that can detect when you're eating and deliver an electric shock. Why not just mandate every obese person to wear it?[1]

[0] https://pavlok.com

[1] </sarcasm> -- it wasn't made for this purpose.

[bserge]

I'd seriously use something like that if it was stronger, tamper proof and would shock me whenever I'm browsing Reddit (and a blacklist of other garbage just in case).

[throwawaylinux]

Where did this "quick fix" clause ever come into it? It feels to me like it's something that you have retroactively made up to suit one particular argument but which has never been an important point before.

The point was always to save lives. I don't remember quick ever factoring into any calculations when people were forced to stay home, their workplaces shut, their education disrupted, their jobs lost, for indeterminate periods of weeks, months, years. Over this past two years we could have collectively lost many tons if only we had some mandates.

So I reject your assertion that quick is a material difference between these two scenarios, and my analogy stands.

[tshaddox]

No, it came from the beginning of the thread we are currently in. It’s what this thread is about.

[throwawaylinux]

But that has never actually been a thing in the public policy debate about it which is the wider context we're talking about. I think it was just made up now to exclude certain other inconvenient analogous situations like this.

How was that tradeoff decided, who decided it and where is the justification? And you can start losing weight in your own home, on day 1. That's faster than even a single shot of vaccine, let alone two shots with a delay, plus boosters etc. So that's not a very satisfactory answer as to why some mandates for the greater good are acceptable and yet others are not.

[LudvigVanHassen]

In this hypothetical scenario, the assumption is being made that the collection good is more important than individual liberty.

Another issue at play here in the US is that Americans are divided on where the line should be drawn between what can be allowed in the name of the collective good. I think it's quite obviously that the nation is very split on this. There isn't a constructive debate going on about the interplay between these two positions or a compromise.

One side (people mandating restrictions) are trying to brute force mandates without interacting, constructively discussing and persuading the other side.