[didibus]

> It was a huge gamble. It could have gone much worse than it did

But so could have Covid, that's why I say this can only be said in hindsight.

Also, the smallpox vaccine was pretty novel at the time when it was mass distributed, that was the first vaccine ever to be mass distributed. You'd have only similar trials as for COVID at the time, small sample, limited time frame, etc. You couldn't have argued it any more/less safer than the mRNA ones back then.

[wikitopian]

You do not have the right to impose your optimistic opinion about vaccines on others.

And I'll do my part to see to it that you don't have the power.

Importantly, threatening coercion increases resistance to vaccination, causing people to throw out the well tested with the optional and experimental.

[didibus]

I don't think medical interventions should be forced on people, even if they need it. I'm for personal autonomy and choice. That said, I also like truth and accuracy and well reasoned thoughts, and it's definitely true that Covid could have been much worse, that the vaccine might have no measurable side effects whatsoever long term, and that forcing it on people did save additional lives that wouldn't have otherwise. Today's posted research paper actually tells us very little more on those topics, except that we need more research on LNP's possible lingering immune effects in humans and see the extent of it and if it even replicates in humans.

Acknowledging this doesn't mean you have to support using force or coercion on people, it just means being intelligent and honest about reality, facts, what we do know, and what we don't know.

That's what I'm here to do. Some people want to claim we now know for a fact that mandated vaccines did nothing and harmed people, this simply isn't true, we don't know that for a fact one bit, we just don't really know, that's all it is. If you claim you know, you don't, you simply believe it strongly without real justification to match the strength of your belief, aka an irrational belief. If you had that justification, it would easily convince others and we would not still all be arguing about it, but the data isn't there, the understanding of the mechanisms involved isn't there. Not yet.

It should be possible to separate the two topics. Do we want as a society which strongly favors individual rights, that we can push mandates in the name of the collective even if it means coercing individuals to do things they don't want to do?

And similarly discuss, if we wanted to save lives, lower the medical cost, and limit the spread or negative impact of Covid overall on society, is it better for a maximum number of people to be vaccinated or is it not?

Unless you're saying that coercion is only justified on individuals if the benefit to society are well known, probable, and sizable enough to some "threshold".

And I'm also happy to discuss this, even to agree with it, in hindsight, the benefits of the vaccines weren't as big as we thought when they first came around, people hoped it would end COVID, eradicate it like vaccines did for smallpox, and that hasn't happened yet. So maybe it didn't meet the threshold, but at the time it wasn't clear that it didn't, because I still remember that we didn't know how bad Covid was going to get, or how well the vaccines would help to fight against it. Thus, I still stand that, assuming this premise, that the right thing is to coerce if there is due cause that doing so will really be to the benefit of all, then at the time it could very well have played out to be the case. Why didn't we eventually stop the mandates sooner afterwards I can't say, but I'm also not sure this is the premise people assumed, I think many people assumed simply saving the most lives mattered more than a few people's resistance to wanting to take a jab in the arm. Is that just? Well it's a debate we're all still having.

[wikitopian]

> Unless you're saying that coercion is only justified on individuals if the benefit to society are well known, probable, and sizable enough to some "threshold".

This point seems too obvious to me to even warrant defending. Obviously, there must be an especially high bar to be met before we chase people down, hold them down, and inject chemicals into them.

[didibus]

Well, you could argue there are no apt thresholds at which this is ever justified. That the individual always trump the collective, so individual autonomy and personal choice should never be compromised, even if it could benefit the collective to do so.

And similarly you could say the reverse, the collective should always take priority, and in all cases where even minor benefits are to be found, the collective matters most.