Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tsimionescu 1735 days ago
Do you believe people are responsible for spreading STDs? If you had sex with a partner that was suffering from an STD but they either didn't get tested themselves or did not inform you of their STD, would you consider them irresponsible?

If you would, then why not consider the same about the vaccine?

By any reasonable standard, just like you're not allowed to smoke indoors because it hurts others, you're not allowed to be indoors with a potentially lethal disease that can kill others. It's that simple. You can choose to not be indoors with others, or you can choose to take a vaccine to eliminate that risk. But it's not your right to choose to risk anyone else's life by being around them in a closed environment while potentially infected.

2 comments

> Do you believe people are responsible for spreading STDs? If you had sex with a partner that was suffering from an STD but they either didn't get tested themselves or did not inform you of their STD, would you consider them irresponsible?

I'm a big believer in personal responsibility. Yes I think they would be responsible and even should be criminally liable in some circumstances (e.g., if they knew they had HIV). I would also bear responsibility for my own actions of course.

> If you would, then why not consider the same about the vaccine?

Consider the same what?

> By any reasonable standard, just like you're not allowed to smoke indoors because it hurts others, you're not allowed to be indoors with a potentially lethal disease that can kill others. It's that simple. You can choose to not be indoors with others, or you can choose to take a vaccine to eliminate that risk. But it's not your right to choose to risk anyone else's life by being around them in a closed environment while potentially infected.

First of all, we aren't talking about going somewhere if you are sick or not, we are talking about going somewhere without being vaccinated. And I don't think that's a reasonable standard. Before 2020, people weren't banned from society if they didn't have a flu vaccine for example. Nobody thought this was unreasonable despite the seasonal fl being potentially lethal disease that can kill others.

Some places, e.g., where certain vulnerable or compromised people were (nursing homes), would mandate vaccines presumably based on reasonable evidence.

Now covid may be worse than the regular flu, but I think the numbers involved matter and so I don't just blindly agree it's reasonable that people should be banned from their work or public places if they haven't had it. Fear mongering aside, I don't think the evidence is there.

>Consider the same what?

Doing reasonable measures to avoid that. Driving can result at death, but we allow people to drive under some speed limit, with a lot of rules on how to do it. You're not supposed to break them, and if you do, then you're at least fined.

I think everyone would agree that reasonable measures should be taken, what we disagree on is what is reasonable.
>You can choose to not be indoors with others, or you can choose to take a vaccine to eliminate that risk.

^^ This is where you go off the rails. You don't "eliminate" that risk with a vaccine. Nobody who produced the vaccine has ever claimed this.