[SigmundA]

Getting Covid should be treated as though you got a vaccine based on the data I have seen, which also means its immunity effects wanes over time and would need to be boosted periodically either by reinfection or vaccine, again the vaccine being the safer approach.

Whether or not you should be "forced" to take it should be based on risk to others in the situation that it is being forced, just like you are "forced" to not speed while driving on a public highway.

I am not sure what the current latest scientific data is but my understanding is that virus and vaccine both reduce the risk of a subsequent infection, spreading the virus if infected and getting severe outcomes requires hospitalization (which reduces hospital capacity). Since this protective effect fades in both circumstances a recent booster would need to be "forced" if not recently having been infected assuming there is no issue with vaccine supply.

[naasking]

> Whether or not you should be "forced" to take it should be based on risk to others in the situation that it is being forced, just like you are "forced" to not speed while driving on a public highway.

I really wish people would stop using this analogy. Driving is a privilege not a right, and you earn that privilege by following the rules.

Living without compulsory medical procedures is a right, not a privilege, so it's the complete opposite case. You need a better analogy.

[SigmundA]

In the US the mandates allow a choice to either vaccinate or get regular testing. No one is being made to take a vaccine against their will in the US at least, they must however take precautions to protect others from their risky behavior.

You have a right to bear arms here in the US that does not mean you can shoot them in a public place because that endangers others. Typically rights have limits when they impose on others rights.

Working is a privilege was well not a right, you have no right to a job at an employer (at least in the US). So the analogy fits as a privilege but it also works as a right since neither are absolute and are typically limited when they effect others around you negatively.

[naasking]

I agree rights have limits when they conflict with other rights. However the right to work is a right under the UN human rights code. That doesn't mean you have a right to work at any particular place, but it does mean if vaccines are a prerequisite for any kind of work, either by government fiat or by broad corporate consensus, that would be a violation of human rights. Using tests to balance vaccines is one way to address that, but some countries don't even take those considerations and want to blanket mandate vaccines.

[SigmundA]

If it where a prerequisite to vaccinate with no other choice to find work anywhere (even remote from home jobs) or even say a majority of places I might agree, but that is not even close to the case here in the US.

I think the UN humans rights could also be interpreted as I having the right to a safe work environment and conversely if I where forced to work in a common office space with unvaccinated / untested people that would also violate my rights.

[naasking]

As I said, the US is not the only place that's discussing or implementing mandates, and other places are less flexible in how they're applying them.

Secondly, the very notion that you can have an expectation of not getting infected from someone else is intrinsically untenable. Just try to define what characteristics a pathogen must have before vaccines are mandatory. Why set the bar at COVID's fatality rate, why not the flu? Why not the common cold? Is fatality rate really the right metric? What about number of post infection complications?

Furthermore, what if we say the COVID rate is the cutoff, what if you have comorbidities that increase your chances of death, does that increase the obligation of your workmates to get vaccinated or is that your problem? I think you know which way the rhetoric is going, but these answers are far from obvious.

[SigmundA]

So which places are you talking about so I know what I can agree or disagree with?

This whole thing seems like continuum fallacy [1]. Just like everything we must all agree on a cutoff because the real world doesn't have neat black and white thresholds, covid is different from the flu that much is obvious and reaches my threshold for requiring vaccination / testing mandates at least in its current form. Do agree that a disease can be deadly enough to require it? If so what is your threshold before the mandate should be allowed?

I am willing to discuss what metrics would help come to consensus as a society, buts its not like requiring vaccines or other preventative measures for certain activities is some foreign concept.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

[spookthesunset]

> they must however take precautions to protect others from their risky behavior

If the vaccine was so good at protecting others, why the hell do vaccinated people still need to wear a mask? How is it even ethical to force people to vaccinate in order to function in society and yet still require them to wear a mask? Seems kind of bullshit to me.

[ben_w]

First, because the vaccines are 80-95% effective in any specific individual (if boosted, potentially much less if not) and that isn’t good enough for society as a whole until the vaccine uptake is higher.

Second, I’ve never really understood why people are all that upset about mask mandates. It’s just clothing. Heck, in winter they are a vast improvement over scarves even without any disease concerns.

(Curiously, last-but-one time I wrote something similar here, someone took so much offence they tried to anonymously wish harm upon me via comments on my blog).

[aakresearch]

> First, because the vaccines are 80-95% effective in any specific individual (if boosted, potentially much less if not) and that isn’t good enough for society as a whole until the vaccine uptake is higher.

That's a theoretical model. A hypothesis, most likely unattainable. Conveniently so, because it creates the whole lot of scapegoats.

> Second, I’ve never really understood why people are all that upset about mask mandates. It’s just clothing.

It is not. The net is full of accounts of people telling out precisely what is wrong with masks for them. On HN, on reddit, anywhere. If you wanted to understand, you have plenty of material to read. You, most likely, simply couldn't be bothered. That, or we're just different species.

> (Curiously, last-but-one time I wrote something similar here, someone took so much offence they tried to anonymously wish harm upon me via comments on my blog).

I'm sorry to hear that. They shouldn't have done it. However, this comment of yours is very dismissive to the concerns that some people perceive as fight-or-flight matter. Some choose to fight, event in such inappropriate and misdirected way.

[ben_w]

> That's a theoretical model. A hypothesis, most likely unattainable.

“Theoretical model” is a tautology.

And it really should be attainable: We’ve successfully eradicated smallpox worldwide, we are close to doing that with polio, and many other illnesses have been eradicated from certain regions via vaccination programs. This is a thing we can do if we try.

> It is not. The net is full of accounts of people telling out precisely what is wrong with masks for them

What I see is always in one of the following categories:

• People asserting that other people (never themselves) with asthma or similar breathing issues can’t wear them, even though literally everyone I know who has asthma or who uses a CPAP machine is actually fine with masks, to the extent that in many cases they get angry with anti-maskers risking giving them covid. Occasionally I also see anti-maskers also asserting that masks make it difficult for children to learn facial expressions in school, which, while superficially plausible, still seems to fail to against reality.

• People who have decided everything about this is a political meme and not real, like this: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/anti-mask-pr...

• People claiming that wearing masks lower blog oxygen levels despite all the evidence from e.g. surgeons, furries (two groups I would not have expected to list together before actually doing so).

It may be that all the above categories have totally overwhelmed real personal anecdotes of people who personally are unable to wear masks. I have no doubt, for example, that there is at least one person with no external nose or ear cartilage for a mask to hold against and who for whatever reason has not had plastic surgery. But this is not what I have ever seen. Always one of the above, on every occasion.

[was8309]

aren't vaccine mandates for participation in a shared environment - like work?

[naasking]

Mandates are being used in many different ways depending on the country. But even if it were limited to work, the right to work is also recognized as a human right so the analogy to driving still fails.