When you willingly refuse to get vaccinated, and are thus more likely to catch and spread COVID, shouldn't we make you pay for any lives you've contributed to taking away?
The effectiveness of the vaccines in terms of preventing spread weren't studied, per pharmaceutical company testimony to congress. The whole notion that you getting the vaccine would prevent grandma from dying was a whole-cloth fabrication.
While I agree with you that people should get vaccinated (if they want. Their body their choice), I feel like the argument of "to what extent other people's selfish choices should be allowed to endanger my life and livelihood" doesn't hold up.
You probably live in some developed country. If it's the US or Canada, I can say for sure that you live in a country that was founded on the exploitation of others. We continue to knowingly benefit off of such exploitation by importing and purchasing products produced by cheap and often abusive labour. We use electronic devices whose manufacture is mostly in China and other such countries where there is recorded abuses and in some cases downright modern day slavery. We continue to use these devices despite knowing that many of their essential metals are mined by exploited children in Africa.
I'm trying to understand exactly to what extent our selfish choices should be allowed to endanger others' lives and livelihoods
Then things might be different, but in our present reality it was always transparently clear to anyone who had eyes to see that the justification for coercination was founded on nothing more than hysteria, lies and wishful thinking.
It matters because vaccination has slowed both the severity and rate of spread of the disease, due to a reduced viral load shedded by the vaccinated individual.
It isn't a binary yes or no, but it has been a gradient. And every policy decision is made on a gradient of harm/benefit. So yes, it is entirely relevant about what the ethics of the hypothetical would be.
Not getting vaccinated is an action that directly harms other people, for what turns out to be no net gain. Requiring vaccination... Is an action that directly harms a few holdouts for some net gain for the rest. None of this is an absolute ethical question, and the degrees of harm and gain are this completely relevant to it.
I agree. We should take away all human rights from the unvaccinated, too!
And anyone talking about vaccine problems, they also need to go.
We could make a special disinfo re-education summer camp, where we will send all the plague rats and political dissidents. We'll let them out when they're good people again, and tow the party line!
Please stop dancing around the issue, and tell us exactly what these 'vaccine problems' are, and how they compare to the 'problems of actually catching COVID [1] without having gotten vaccinated'.
The comparison will not be favourable to you. [2]
[1] Your camp spent the past two years both telling everyone, and doing your best to ensure that everyone is going to catch it anyways, so this seems like a reasonable comparison to require.
[2] The risk of treatable myocarditis from catching COVID is vastly higher than from the vaccines. The risk of injury and death from less-treatable complications is incomparably higher. If we're all going to get it anyways, you're choosing to both hurt yourself, and others by not getting vaccinated. You can't even freeload off herd immunity...
My camp? Fuck off with that. No one's in my camp - especially not radicals like you.
I'm not going to argue with you on vaccine effectiveness, because that's actually not my point. I'm not afraid of people discussing the effectiveness of vaccines - I'm certain the correct opinion will win out.
What I am afraid of is the cruelty of political radicals - which this issue has created in excess.
During the pandemic, people in my corporate slack channels were GLEEFULLY fantasizing about all the vaccine deniers that were going to be fired due to Bidens executive order. This behaviour is terrifying, and anyone who carries this out is reprehensible. Even a moron is a person and has rights.
And the fact that you don't see this as the actual issue is evidence you're still possessed by this nonsense. I posted a snarky sarcastic comment about government suppression and you're talking about vaccines.