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by TurningCanadian
1581 days ago
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First, vaccines do inhibit transmission. They're not perfect, and the protection begins to wane after a few months, but to say that they don't inhibit transmission is false. Further, the vaccines have consistently significantly reduced hospitalization, and most Canadian hospitals continue to be stretched with a long backlog. The continued strain from COVID hospitalizations continues to impact others. Freedom has always been limited when it interferes with the rights of others, (in this case timely access to healthcare) and borders have always had stricter rules than normal life within a country. We're in a gray area here, granted. Ideally ones' own health choices would not impact others, and hospitals would be back to normal, but the restrictions are not nonsense. |
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I was a little imprecise--I don't think the transmission inhibiting effect is literally zero, but I suspect it's marginal (based on US health officials remarks about 'everyone is going to get omicron' https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/11/health/us-coronavirus-tuesday...).
> Freedom has always been limited when it interferes with the rights of others, (in this case timely access to healthcare) and borders have always had stricter rules than normal life within a country.
I can't take this argument seriously while Canada tolerates so many other things that increase one's risk of consuming hospital resources (drinking, smoking, driving, etc) and fails to mandate other things which would similarly reduce load on hospitals (diet, exercise, etc). In these other cases, it's regarded as the responsibility of the government to provide enough healthcare to meet demand--not to infringe on the rights of citizens.
> We're in a gray area here, granted. Ideally ones' own health choices would not impact others, and hospitals would be back to normal, but the restrictions are not nonsense.
I think we left the gray area when it became clear that COVID would be endemic and vaccines don't do much to reduce transmission.