[SamoyedFurFluff]

Forgive me, but what is it a slippery slope of? I immediately thought this logic was already applied to things like child toy regulation or lead paint warning regulation or food recall regulation or workplace safety regulation… it’s really common for the government to enforce people to do things (or ban people from doing other things) in certain contexts because of the danger otherwise.

[zdragnar]

> Covid was/is killing people, vaccines prevent that, so vaccines must be required. Very simple.

There's a pretty significant difference between "you may not sell dangerous products" and "you must use X medicine".

Next up, government mandated pedometers with minimum step counts, broccoli consumption, teeth brushing (prevents heart disease that kills people!), flossing, and minimum hours of sleep per night.

Once we've kept the fat, foul-breathed insomniacs out of society, government bans you from going into the wilderness (bears! bee allergies!), driving a car, riding a bike, running with scissors, and using a computer for more than a few hours a day.

Some of these things obviously kill more than others, but heart disease, cancer and "accident" are all leading causes of death in the US, with heart disease and cancer beating out COVID in 2020 and probably 2022.

[Vt71fcAqt7]

I actually think the government can and should regulate food consumption. We already did it with cigarettes and trans fats. Omega-6 fatty acids should be next. A more fair but less politically viable alternative is to tax the healthcare of people with >%30 body fat. But these should probably have 10 year limits with the ultimate goal of changing people's habits.

[LudwigNagasena]

Ok, you want a big brother to tell you what to do. But why would you bring me into this?

[Vt71fcAqt7]

>Ok, you want a big brother to tell you what to do.

More like I want to solve an increasingly unsusatinable cost to society:

>People with obesity experienced a statistically significant twofold increase in average direct healthcare costs per year (EUR 5,934), compared with controls (EUR 2,788) and had statistically significantly higher indirect costs compared to controls. Total healthcare costs for people with obesity and one or more of the 11 comorbidities were 91.7%–342.8% higher than total healthcare costs of the population with obesity but none of the 11 comorbidities.

>Obesity was associated with an increase in both direct and indirect costs. The presence of comorbidities was associated with additional healthcare costs.[0]

[0]https://doi.org/10.1080/14737167.2022.2053676

[LudwigNagasena]

So you want to solve a problem created by authoritarian enforcement of healthcare costs distribution by introducing authoritarian enforcement of lifestyle?

[zdragnar]

These are still negative regulations (don't do this), which are fundamentally different than the COVID vaccine regulations.

A comparable analogy would be mandating, under penalty of legally enforced isolation, that you eat a certain amount of vegetables per unit of body weight.

[prottog]

Sounds like the more reasonable solution is to remove taxpayer funding for healthcare. That way, people who make bad choices wouldn't be subsidized by the public.

[Vt71fcAqt7]

Yeah, except that's even less politically viable.