[ptaipale]

You cannot "elect" to not get a vaccine and be just fine. You're just relying on your luck after electing not to reduce the risks.

The risks vary with different diseases, and in different people, and in different demographic environments. But with covid, it's quite clear that for all adults, the risk reduction by vaccine far outweighs the risks of vaccine complications.

[peteradio]

Risks of vaccine complications are not the only risks to weigh against getting a vaccine.

Now that these are being mandated it also becomes a risk of validating medical tyranny as an authoritarian methodology.

[dahart]

Is it tyranny if it’s what the majority wants and votes for? It seems like “tyranny” is being used to describe situations where democracy is working as expected, and some people just don’t want to accept the majority result. I feel like this word tyranny is being thrown around a lot lately without much rigorous thinking about the fact that we do need laws because we have no choice about having to share a lot of things including the air we breathe. Is the fact that it’s illegal to murder someone tyrannical and authoritarian?

[peteradio]

How much of your comfort in these drugs is based on who is holding power wherever you may reside?

I don't really know what you are talking about with the murder analogy. Obviously the uncomfortable issue at play here is the duality of:

Your right to swing your arms ends at my face or whatever.

Who's doing what to who here? Are you punching me with the mandate or am I punching you with my hypothetical infection and hypothetical ICU bed? Do we have to put numbers to how hypothetically infectious I am or we must fall in line and "Do whatever we can" which today happens to be getting injected with a drug that fails to prevent infection.

[dahart]

> How much of your comfort in these drugs is based on who is holding power wherever you may reside?

Literally zero. I know enough about science and economics to know that the US president has no bearing on the efficacy of the COVID vaccine whatsoever, just like politicians have exactly zero bearing on how well the flu vaccine works or how well Ibuprofen works.

> Your right to swing your arms ends at my face or whatever.

Right, so why in your mind doesn’t that extend to my right to not get infected by you in public?

P.S. you dodged the question: why is a mandate that the majority wants equivalent to tyranny? Do you think the mandate to buy car insurance in order to drive on public roads is tyranny?

[spurgu]

Oh you mean the Americans who think they have a 15-25% chance of dying from Covid if they get it? I wouldn't trust the majority to be well-informed.

https://covid19pulse.usc.edu/ (granted the numbers have been going down recently, but it still illustrates the hysteria quite well)

And I also wouldn't trust big pharma to have my best interest in mind.

[dahart]

> Oh you mean the Americans who think they have a 15-25% chance of dying from Covid if they get it?

Absolutely not. I meant the total number of people who have actually died from it compared to the near zero vaccine fatalities.

[ifyoubuildit]

This may be relevant to your question: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

[dahart]

Do you believe this is what parent was referring to? I must assume not because they used the word “authoritarian”, which implies they’re complaining about minority groups imposing their will on the majority.

Do you believe that Tyranny of the Majority is a valid concern with the vaccine mandates? Which minority groups are being oppressed?

[ifyoubuildit]

I can't speak for parent, I'll leave that to them. I just meant to show evidence that because something is approved by the majority doesn't disqualify it from being tyrannical.

Personally, I don't see why it wouldn't be a concern with the mandates, but I think this conversation has already been repeated by others ad nauseum:

I say bodily autonomy, you might say we mandate all sorts of vaccines, I say these aren't those vaccines, you might say well they're safe and effective, and I say talk to me in 5 or 10 years when we have long term data, and you might say well we've never linked adverse effects to previous vaccines after n days, to which I'd say good luck actually finding those impacts if they do exist and again these aren't those vaccines, and we eventually arrive at a difference in beliefs/biases and an impasse.

[dahart]

> I say bodily autonomy, you might say we mandate all sorts of vaccines […] talk to me in 5 or 10 years when we have long term data

It’s strange to me that the arguments against vaccines are all self-centered, about personal risk, and the arguments in favor are all addressing net social benefit. I kinda want the bodily autonomy to not get infected by someone refusing to take any social precautions over political beliefs.

We have more than enough data already, enough people have died from COVID, to prove the vaccine is a net benefit to society, and enough data and solid evidence to know that the personal risk is much lower than the risks that come from getting COVID.

> because something is approved by the majority doesn’t disqualify it from being tyrannical

We’re talking about something specific, not vague platitudes. Tyranny is defined as being oppressive, arbitrary or cruel assertions of power. None of that is true for the COVID vaccine.