[xyzzy_plugh]

I thought about this for several moments, and I disagree.

Vaccines offer some personal protection but predominantly become effective by achieving herd immunity. Vaccine hesitancy undermines this goal and weakens the system. Being pro-vaccine is senseless without being in favor of enough people being vaccinated to provide strong immunity, including for those who cannot be vaccinated due to medical complications.

Even if you were to argue on behalf of one who is indifferent to vaccines but is against mandates, so long as those mandates encourage vaccination, they effectively are discouraging vaccination and are thus anti-vax.

It can be hard to recognize all of this without the right perspective. In isolation, it is easy to claim that one is not anti-vax; however actions speak infinitely louder than words.

[viridian]

This is a crazy level of absolutism that seems only to exist to force a "with us or against us" reaction.

I think everyone where I live should probably be supplementing vitamin D in the winter months because it is damn near impossible for even people working outdoors all day to get enough vitamin D through natural sunlight at this parallel. Never would I dream of mandating a vitamin D regimen to people. My lack of wanting a vitamin D mandate, by your very argument, would make me anti vitamin D.

I take vitamin D daily, and have convinced others they probably should too, which I think makes me an advocate on some level. If even your top percentile advocates are "anti" from your operating definition, because they don't go far enough, you may be an extremist.

[ghoward]

This argument is useless in the face of the COVID shots because they do not prevent transmission, an important factor in herd immunity being effective.

Being anti-vax-mandate for an ineffective vaccine is not anti-vax in any way.

[xyzzy_plugh]

Your lack of understanding how vaccines work belies your argument. No vaccine prevents transmission. That makes no sense. In order to prevent transmission, your immune system must prevent any infection, regardless of how minor. No vaccine guarantees absolute prevention from infection. Depending on mode of transmission, any infection can be transmissible. Thus any vaccine may not prevent transmission, for anything.

Ask yourself what the efficacy would need to be for you to be pro-vax-mandate. I suspect I already know the answer.

[ghoward]

> No vaccine prevents transmission.

Wrong. Some viruses don't get transmitted if the person is not symptomatic, even if there's an infection. Your lack of understanding belies your argument.

> Ask yourself what the efficacy would need to be for you to be pro-vax-mandate. I suspect I already know the answer.

Well, first of all, the vaccine has to be:

* effective,

* free of major side effects,

* for a virus that kills a large portion of the infected and that kills more than just the elderly and obese,

* and not mandated for people to actually live.

The COVID shots and mandates did not meet any of those requirements.

And if you complain that my last requirement is too much, remember that in the United States, the Federal Government has severe limits on its power on purpose. Sure, the government should be able to prevent unvaccinated people from accessing government facilities, but only temporarily (while the pandemic is going on) because the government has jurisdiction over those things.

But it does not have jurisdiction over telling businesses who they can and cannot do business with.

[prottog]

Not just the federal government! All levels of government have limits on their powers. Important in the context of a New York state court ruling.

[ghoward]

Yes, exactly! Thank you for saying that when I forgot to.

[ms4720]

Ok I have more vaccines then the law requires because I went places where it made sense to get more shots for more disease.

I have not touched the COVID shot because I did not trust it for these reasons:

- vaccines take years to test not months - there were new untested biotech involved - in short order I was being told that it does not work for this flavor of COVID.

And now it is acknowledged to not protect you or prevent the spread of COVID.

How can you claim any social good here? it has bad side effects and does not work.

[DiogenesKynikos]

> vaccines take years to test not months

This is because of money, not because of fundamental scientific issues.

This time, there was a financial backer (the government) that was willing to fund development of a whole bunch of vaccine candidates, without any preconditions. That's never happened before.

Normally, if you want to develop a vaccine, you have to go to investors, and convince them that your vaccine has a high probability of succeeding, not only technologically but financially. If you're lucky, you find someone to fund phase-1 trials. After those trials are done, you analyze the results, and then go try to convince investors to fund phase-2 trials. You have to finish those trials, analyze the results, and then go try to convince investors to fund phase-3 trials, which are extremely expensive.

If there's someone who guarantees funding for all three phases up-front, you can go a lot faster, without sacrificing scientific integrity at all. You can begin recruiting people for the phase-3 trials before phase-1 trials even begin. You can immediately begin the next phase of the trials once you know the vaccine passes the requisite safety threshold, even if the previous trials are still returning data.

Normally, these things are done strictly in order in order to minimize financial risk. If there is no financial risk, you can do a lot of things in parallel.

> And now it is acknowledged to not protect you or prevent the spread of COVID.

The vaccines reduce your risk of serious disease or death by orders of magnitude. That's extremely strong protection. They reduce your chance of infection and transmission by a bit (more in the first few months after vaccination), but not as much as they protect your health.

> How can you claim any social good here? it has bad side effects and does not work.

The vaccines have likely saved more than a million lives in the US. The worst side effects are extremely rare, and are caused at a higher rate by the virus itself.

[laverya]

> > vaccines take years to test not months

> This is because of money, not because of fundamental scientific issues.

This is not at all true. There is only so much you can parallelize things, as every software dev should know. It will always take 9+ months to figure out what the effects are for a mother that was vaccinated before conception, for instance. (Does this trigger autoimmune issues? Birth defects, like thalidomide did? And some birth defects - mental ones in particular - might not become apparent for years!)

> They reduce your chance of infection and transmission by a bit (more in the first few months after vaccination), but not as much as they protect your health.

There's a decent bit of data now saying that having been vaccinated in the past increases your chance of infection after 12+ months.

> The vaccines have likely saved more than a million lives in the US. The worst side effects are extremely rare, and are caused at a higher rate by the virus itself.

One problem is that the lives saved and the side effects happen in different and only slightly overlapping populations, and long-term side effects (for both covid and the vaccines) are not yet known or knowable.

[DiogenesKynikos]

> It will always take 9+ months to figure out what the effects are for a mother that was vaccinated before conception, for instance.

A couple of things. First, pregnant women are generally excluded from vaccine trials - this isn't something specific to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

Second, what is the scientific basis for thinking that vaccination before pregnancy will affect women at the end of their pregnancy (that is, 9+ months later)? When you propose a possible harm, there should be a scientifically plausible basis for it. Is there one in this case?

> There's a decent bit of data now saying that having been vaccinated in the past increases your chance of infection after 12+ months.

I haven't seen anything to suggest this.

> One problem is that the lives saved and the side effects happen in different and only slightly overlapping populations

CoVID-19 was one of the leading causes of death across a wide range of ages. The idea that only the elderly suffered from it is not true.

> long-term side effects (for both covid and the vaccines) are not yet known or knowable.

Long-term side-effects of vaccination are very much knowable. There is no known mechanism that could lead to these vaccines causing long-term side-effects, and there are very good biological reasons for believing that they do not cause any long-term side-effects. Vaccine side-effects occur within months of vaccination, for reasons that are understood. They do not arise years afterwards (also for reasons that are understood). Saying that there may be side-effects years from now is simply FUD.

[laverya]

> First, pregnant women are generally excluded from vaccine trials - this isn't something specific to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

This is perhaps not an argument in favor of the proven safety of vaccines for pregnant women.

> Second, what is the scientific basis for thinking that vaccination before pregnancy will affect women at the end of their pregnancy (that is, 9+ months later)? When you propose a possible harm, there should be a scientifically plausible basis for it. Is there one in this case?

We fundamentally do not understand the human body. We do not know why many common medications work, and many of the reasons we think others work are likely wrong. And we know that many chemicals carry future risks of birth defects.

> CoVID-19 was one of the leading causes of death across a wide range of ages. The idea that only the elderly suffered from it is not true.

This is because people in their 20s and 30s are so unlikely to die outside of accidents and malice, not because covid was a large absolute risk. The risk of death for someone over 65 was iirc 100x that of someone under 55.

When you limit the group to "otherwise healthy people under 40" the risk ratio skews even further. This is normal. But it means that those people receive a much lower benefit from vaccination.

> There is no known mechanism that could lead to these vaccines causing long-term side-effects

Spike protein accumulating in cardiac tissue leading to myocarditis. Antigen fixation, leading to reduced protection against future variants. The immune system identifying the mRNA delivery vector as a threat, preventing the use of future mRNA treatments.

"But those aren't proved" is really not convincing to me. For an EUA for at-risk populations, ok. For mandates? Heeeelll no, go cross those Ts first.

> and there are very good biological reasons for believing that they do not cause any long-term side-effects.

The whole point of a vaccine is to cause long term effects. That intended effect is immunity to disease.

"Nothing else could possibly persist" smacks of hubris to me.

> Vaccine side-effects occur within months of vaccination, for reasons that are understood. They do not arise years afterwards (also for reasons that are understood). Saying that there may be side-effects years from now is simply FUD.

This is medicine we're talking about, a bit of uncertainty and doubt is very much justified - especially when the process has been politicized.

[DiogenesKynikos]

> We fundamentally do not understand the human body.

This is not true. We understand a great deal about the human body. What's relevant here is that we understand the mechanisms that cause serious vaccine side-effects, and we understand why those side-effects appear within a few months.

> Spike protein accumulating in cardiac tissue leading to myocarditis.

Myocarditis occurs soon after vaccination, not long afterwards. It's also a very rare side-effect (it actually occurs more often from the virus itself).

> The whole point of a vaccine is to cause long term effects. That intended effect is immunity to disease.

What does this have to do with long-term adverse side-effects? The types of changes that a vaccine causes in the immune system are understood, and the reasons why those changes sometimes cause adverse side-effects are also understood. The mechanisms do not spring into action years later. The side-effects begin within months, at the latest.

> "Nothing else could possibly persist" smacks of hubris to me.

You're just dismissing immunology out-of-hand, based on vague statements about science not knowing how the body works.

> especially when the process has been politicized.

The politicization was on the side of the vaccine "skeptics." One of the most infuriating aspects of the pandemic has been how the most effective single tool for saving lives, a tool that has minuscule risks, has been subject to so much FUD. This tool is safe enough and beneficial enough that I would have absolutely no problem with mandating it for participation in society, the same way that seat belts and airbags are mandated.

[xyzzy_plugh]

I am not debating the efficacy of a particular vaccine and I care not for your rationale -- save your breath.

Your arguments, however you feel may be justified, are not in favor of vaccination, and by definition are anti-vax. Ask yourself what would need to be different for you to be in favor.

[account42]

This kind of binary thinking where you want to put everyone not fully toeing the party line into the evil group is exactly what makes issues like this so politicized. All it does in the end is divide and thereby push people further into opposition of what you are trying to force on them. In other words if you want more people to actually become anti-vaxers rather than people questioning or just being hesitant about a specific novel vaccine, keep doing what you are doing.

[somenameforme]

The etymology of vaccine comes from vacca, which is Latin for cow. Vaccines were originally discovered after finding that milkmaids seemed somehow immune to smallpox, which otherwise not only made people gravely ill but had a mortality rate upwards of 30%. The reason, it was discovered, is that they were regularly exposed to cowpox which sufficiently strengthened their immune systems to provide effective immunity to smallpox. And thus the field was born.

Herd immunity does not make vaccines work better, but is a tertiary effect whereby unvaccinated individuals can receive effective protection simply by living in an area with a high vaccination rate. In extreme cases (such as with smallpox) diseases can even be completely eliminated, but this requires extremely effective vaccines that prevent infection and spread, vaccines that are robust against mutations, and diseases that are unlikely to be able to exist without humans. None of these factors apply to COVID or the vaccines developed for it.

[xyzzy_plugh]

The etymological tidbit is but a distraction from the meat of the issue, which is that you are wrong.

Namely, herd immunity absolutely does make vaccines work better, and is the basis of all vaccine policy in the modern world. I'm not even sure how you can state it's a tertiary effect when it is the primary reason vaccine policies exist.

You're simply spreading misinformation. Herd immunity due to vaccination has resulted in the eradication or near eradication of multiple deadly infectious diseases over the last few centuries. And if not for humans, then look only to farm medicine. Ignoring the power of vaccine policies and mandatory vaccination walks humanity back hundreds of years. Eradicating small pox took hundreds of years. We've been combating COVID-19 for close to three years.

Ask yourself: what qualities of a COVID-19 vaccine would satisfy you?

[somenameforme]

The entire point is that a smallpox vaccine does provide genuine immunity from smallpox to the point that was so apparent that we could casually observe even the tiniest micro-population (milkmaids) were somehow just completely immune. They didn't get it, they didn't spread it, and their immunity didn't just disappear in a few months or because of a slight genetic variation.

And, also critically, there is no non-human transmission vector for smallpox. It travels exclusively between humans, contrasted against COVID which thrives in both human and animal populations. So if you were unvaccinated and spent all your time around milkmaids - you would not become infected, because there was no vector for the disease to get to you. If 90% of your company were milkmaids, you may get it if one of the other unvaccinated was infected, but the odds would be reduced. This is what herd immunity refers to.

You can observe the effects of 'herd immunity' with the current COVID vaccines in places such as Gibraltar. They achieved greater than 100% vaccination rates, and early on, by vaccinating not only their entire population, but even a large number of migrant workers. They ended up with a death rate of 3,204 per million contrasted against 3,266 for the US. And their infection rate was one of the highest in the world at nearly 60%, but that was probably more so due to extensive testing than greater susceptibility.

[tlogan]

The problem is that this is a very first mandate for vaccination we ever imposed on ordinary people.

The US has very complex society and diverse population, so mandates do not work and might create backclash.

I think mass vaccination can be easily achieved by mass marketing. Mandates just made this way too political: and as we can see did not achieve a thing.

[Wowfunhappy]

> The problem is that this is a very first mandate for vaccination we ever imposed on ordinary people.

That's not true! It used to be you had to show your smallpox vaccine scar (the vaccine left a distinctive mark) in order to enter many businesses.

[tlogan]

That is true. I forgot about that.

And why did they check for scars? Because people were forging their vaccination certificate (like now with COVID). So this mandate thing did not really worked well.

[Wowfunhappy]

I imagine the scar would be relatively easy to fake with makeup. I always assumed it was just the most obvious way to verify smallpox vaccine status. Did we even have consistent medical records back then?

It's okay if some unvaccinated people manage to cheat the system, as long as the vast majority cannot. Similar to how laws against thievery are useful even though thieves still exist.

[noxer]

Funny how millions of people who had all the common vaccines except the covid "vaccine" suddenly became anti-vaxer. That like saying someone who smokes cigarettes, pipes and shisha but not cigars must be anti-smoking.

The common western covid "vaccines" do not have the properties of other common vaccines. They are at best comparable to flu shots which I know no one under the age of 50 who has ever took them. Are these all anti-vaxers now too? Have you ever head anyone talk about herd immunity related to flu shots pre-covid? Almost everyone alive today apparently prevented herd immunity for flu most of his life by not taking the flu shot. So we're all anit-vaxers.

>I thought about this for several moments, and I disagree.

You need some more moments I guess, you clearly didn't think this trough.

[krisoft]

One can be absolutely pro-vaccine, want to drive down vaccine hesitancy rates and still think that mandating vaccinations is not the way to go.

For example they could argue that people will rebel against "you must do X" reflectively, but a well designed and sensitive information campaign might win them over.

[spopejoy]

> One can be absolutely pro-vaccine, want to drive down vaccine hesitancy rates and still think that mandating vaccinations is not the way to go.

One would then be quite ignorant of the history of how vaccines are rolled out. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211029-why-mandatory-va...

[Amezarak]

We knew the odds the Covid vaccine would substantially reduce transmission were very low. Covid first impacts your mucosal immune compartment, which means an infection first gives you all the symptoms exhibited by a mild case of Covid. It also mostly spreads from there as you exhale.

The vaccine does not target your mucosal immune system. It's injected. Thus, the vaccine will help you if you develop a severe case of Covid that spreads beyond your throat/sinuses/lungs. Immune system compartments work largely independently. [1]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK27169/

> The first is that immune responses induced within one compartment are largely confined in expression to that particular compartment. The second is that lymphocytes are restricted to particular compartments by expression of homing receptors that are bound by ligands, known as addressins, that are specifically expressed within the tissues of the compartment. (Immunobiology: The Immune System in Health and Disease. 5th edition.)

[MockObject]

This definition of "anti-vax" is broad enough to include those who happily received the vaccine, but oppose mandates.

That really isn't what normal people infer from the term.

[spopejoy]

That's because being anti-mandate is effectively being anti-vax from a public health policy perspective. By construction, effective public health can't be about individual choice, and the astonishing efficacy of vaccines in history has relied on this principle.