[danhak]

We coerced young, low-risk people into receiving these treatments despite known side effects on pain of losing their education or employment or being able to enter privately-owned establishments (irrespective of the wishes of the owners of those privately-owned establishments).

We justified it with the specious argument that they were putting other people at undue risk by remaining unvaccinated. We claimed that vaccinated people would not spread the virus.

And we gave the companies producing these vaccines blanket legal immunity from any potential liability.

[Eisenstein]

We require young people to get vaccinated as a rule in order to obtain education. Every medical intervention involves risks. So does taking a shower or taking the bus to school. We all have to take risks and some of them are mandated for the good of society.

There were very good indications that the vaccine would prevent spread.

Public policy decisions which cost lives are not unusual and although tragic, are often necessary. For instance should we use the entire yearly budget of a hospital to cure one child, or let that child die in order to fund daily operations? These questions have no 'right' answer and no matter what was decided there is going to be criticism and errors which result in less than optimal or even tragic outcomes.

Looking back in hindsight and using the knowledge we now have, I would say that the biggest errors made during the pandemic by public policymakers (besides disbanding the pandemic team and having a leader who was looking at everything in the lens of a what was personally good for him at that moment) was in messaging.

If we can use this to craft a better way to handle public messaging in the future then perhaps we can avoid a lot of the negative societal effects which we are now dealing with -- specifically lack of trust in scientific institutions, division based on ideology and not evidence, and the spread and enabling of conspiratorial thinking.

[adamiscool8]

>We all have to take risks and some of them are mandated for the good of society.

What are some other risky and irreversible interventions mandated upon the individual for the good of society?

[Eisenstein]

Anything we allow parents to do to or for their children or force their children to do qualifies.

[adamiscool8]

We generally don't allow parents to force risky irreversible things onto their children. But also, the view of all citizens as simple children of the State seems...problematic.

[Eisenstein]

> We generally don't allow parents to force risky irreversible things onto their children.

We absolutely do, but that is a completely different conversation.

If that doesn't work for you I am sure you can't object to conscription as a societal burden.

Where are you going with this line of discussion? Or did you just want me to think of something that wasn't medical?

[adamiscool8]

Conscription is a good example of a social burden unfairly dispersed and widely objected to — at least in the West. My point is the underpinning of this “one more mandatory intervention is no big deal” view is not based on reality. The State stopped forcing irreversible interventions on adults when eugenics went out of (polite) fashion. The belief compulsory acts are normal and good policy is based on something like a public health bureaucracy fantasy version of economics’ perfectly rational actor models.

[lrem]

Schools spring to mind.

[adamiscool8]

Schooling is mandatory but schools are not. That process is maybe arguably risky, but also not irreversible.

[hammock]

>There were very good indications that the vaccine would prevent spread.

Now that we know that to be not true, do you support removing the covid jab from the schedule required in school?

[Eisenstein]

I do not have children so I have no stake in the matter and I do not feel that Id am sufficiently informed about the particulars at this point to have an opinion.

[mikem170]

I happened to stumble across this [0], on the effectiveness of a third covid vaccination for 18-29 year olds, while looking for recent (omicron) studies quantifying how well vaccines keep people out of hospitals, and thought I'd pass it along:

> To prevent one COVID-19 hospitalisation over a 6-month period, we estimate that 31207–42836 young adults aged 18–29 years must receive a third mRNA vaccine. Booster mandates in young adults are expected to cause a net harm: per COVID-19 hospitalisation prevented, we anticipate at least 18.5 serious adverse events from mRNA vaccines, including 1.5–4.6 booster-associated myopericarditis cases in males (typically requiring hospitalisation). We also anticipate 1430–4626 cases of grade ≥3 reactogenicity interfering with daily activities (although typically not requiring hospitalisation). University booster mandates are unethical because they: (1) are not based on an updated (Omicron era) stratified risk-benefit assessment for this age group; (2) may result in a net harm to healthy young adults; (3) are not proportionate: expected harms are not outweighed by public health benefits given modest and transient effectiveness of vaccines against transmission; (4) violate the reciprocity principle because serious vaccine-related harms are not reliably compensated due to gaps in vaccine injury schemes; and (5) may result in wider social harms. We consider counterarguments including efforts to increase safety on campus but find these are fraught with limitations and little scientific support.

As an fyi, I also bumped into stats saying that it was something like 5-6 times less likely for vaccinated people to end up in the hospital (although most people who end up in the hospital are elderly), and vaccinations seem to confer only 15% benefit against long covid. I was hoping to find something breaking hopsitalization down by age and comorbidities in addition to vaccination status, but have had no luck so far.

[0] https://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2022/12/05/jme-2022-108449

[elsonrodriguez]

There's at least one study indicating reduced spread in households that are vaccinated.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.27.21268278v...

[gwd]

You know what also causes myocarditis? COVID-19 [1].

So the choices were:

1. Don't pressure young people to get vaccinated. Nearly everyone who's unvaccinated eventually catches COVID-19. Some of them would have severe reactions and die; or spend time in a hospital, taking up space and delaying care for others, causing those other people to die. Nearly all of them would pass COVID-19 on to other people, many of whom would be older and die. Some of them would develop myocarditis and die.

2. Pressure young people to be vaccinated for COVID-19. Some of them would develop myocarditis and die.

#2 is strictly better than #1.

Sometimes in life there are no good options; only not-so-great options and very bad options.

[1] https://www.beaumont.org/health-wellness/blogs/myocarditis-r...

[RansomStark]

That's not necessarily the case, if fact it might be the exact opposite.

1. Don't pressure young people to get the vaccine, some will end up in hospital, some will die.

2. Pressure young people to get the vaccine and 6 times as many of them end up in hospital from the vaccine, taking up more space, and putting more pressure on the system [0], some of them will die [1][2]

[0] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v...

[1] https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/tragedy...

[2] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/death-boy-14-three-...

[ccn0p]

One of the cruxes of the issue is what constitutes "pressure". Should we block children from going to school in order to "pressure" them forcing the risk of #1 on them rather than allowing parents to make their own choices?

[addingadimensio]

You still get Covid after you are vaccinated. Fun fact if you are vaccinated before you catch Covid you cannot develop an immunity to the nucleocapsid is this good is this bad I don’t know tune in in 10 years when we know more

[udp]

> if you are vaccinated before you catch Covid you cannot develop an immunity to the nucleocapsid

Do you have a reference?

[lanstin]

As we also coerce babies into screening for various diseaaes and for vax against the diseases that afflict societies without this science. That is how it works. That is why we mostly don't die from infectious diseases for the first time since we built cities.

[gfodor]

Not for an emergency use drug that doesn’t maintain herd immunity for a disease that is minimally harmful to children and is under immense selective pressure to break out of the vaccine.

Maybe you’ve got a bad mental model because of the word “vaccine.” This is not a vaccine of the kind we give children, in terms of what it prevents and the extent of data and knowledge we have of its side effects.

[spacefracas]

This is incorrect. Of the vaccines that are given to children, none prevent infection. All significantly prevent disease and death.

[gfodor]

This feels like pure revisionism. The purpose of the vaccination programs for children is not to prevent severe disease or death, though that is a nice benefit. The purpose, and manifested effect, is to maintain population herd immunity due to the fact these vaccines radically reduce the chance of the child acting as a vector. The consequence is a vastly reduced incidence rate across the whole population due to this network effect vs a scenario with no mandate. This was widely understood to be the ethical justification for mandating these vaccines: it led to a collective benefit, counterfactually preventing massive suffering across many individual, a benefit which outweighs the risk to the individual from taking these drugs. This fundamental premise is entirely not the case for this vaccine program, which does not come close to helping with herd immunity for a disease we now acknowledge is endemic, and also happens to have a wildly different relative risk profile for children vs the other vaccines we mandate.

[prpl]

it’s not entirely likely the dead were at a low-risk of death by the actual virus

[Ensorceled]

> We claimed that vaccinated people would not spread the virus.

Who is "we", I have never seen anything other the claims that there were claims. Can you point me to an epidemiologist that made this claim.

> And we gave the companies producing these vaccines blanket legal immunity from any potential liability.

We have ALWAYS given vaccine companies blanket legal immunity. This isn't a new thing and there are good reasons for it.

[hammock]

>Who is "we", I have never seen anything other the claims that there were claims. Can you point me to an epidemiologist that made this claim.

https://twitter.com/guccibase/status/1488297386208378889

Included in the video: Rochelle Walensky, Monica Gandhi

[Ensorceled]

Ah, by "we", you mean politicians.

These clowns are also all saying it's 100% effective which was known to be false from day 1.

[hammock]

You asked for an epidemiologist. I gave you two of the world's foremost practicing infectious disease experts : Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, Mass General chief of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital; and Monica Gandhi MD, MPH, Associate Chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF.

It seems you're being intellectually dishonest

[ceejayoz]

Monica Gandhi has been repeatedly wrong, claiming herd immunity in India right before somewhere between 1-3 million died, to the point of having to apologize for it. https://twitter.com/MehdiHasanShow/status/148940441066927719...

[Ensorceled]

> It seems you're being intellectually dishonest

Fair assumption. But actually I'm Canadian and, while I knew COVID discourse was a clusterfuck in the US, I didn't realize that there were people that clearly knew better blatantly lying about this.

For instance, we KNEW that the best case scenario was 90% effectiveness for the MRNA vaccines. Seeing these people saying "you won't get COVID" is an absolute disgrace and people should lose their jobs and medical certifications for this.

[simonsarris]

Do you truly not remember? That was exactly the claim made at the start of vaccination. From December 2020:

Fauci Predicts U.S. Could See Signs Of Herd Immunity By Late March Or Early April

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/1...

> "I would say 50% would have to get vaccinated before you start to see an impact," Fauci said. "But I would say 75 to 85% would have to get vaccinated if you want to have that blanket of herd immunity."

Months later, May 2021:

Masks off? Fauci confirms ‘extremely low’ risk of transmission, infection for vaccinated

https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/dr-fauci-confirms-extreme...

[scarmig]

Why should the companies be held liable? This was a government project enforced by the gun; the companies didn't force anyone to take their vaccines, and there's not a way they could have made them meaningfully safer given the timelines.

[burner990]

My employer wouldn't let me go to the office or even any offsites or outdoor actives (i.e. a picnic) until very recently. (Despite my approved religious exemption and "requiring" all employees to work in the office).

If that isn't coercion to take an experimental vaccine i don't know what is.

[lazyasciiart]

Seems reasonable to me. They want everyone to be at the office and vaccinated, but they’re not allowed to fire you because “religion”, so they made special accommodations to let you continue working without making all of their other employees have to be around you. You appear to be mad that your “exemption” wasn’t enough to make them pretend you were vaccinated?

[burner990]

But no accommodation to go to the company (outdoor) events and hear talks from the executives?

> You appear to be mad that your “exemption” wasn’t enough to make them pretend you were vaccinated?

I had blood test proof of antibodies but its just about "feel goods".

And they didn't require boosters, just the first 2 doses from over a year ago, so yes its non-sensical and purely political (not based on science).

[threeseed]

a) I wouldn't class it as experimental when hundreds of millions of people have taken it.

b) It sounds like your employer did the right thing to balance your rights versus those of the people you work with.

[burner990]

> I wouldn't class it as experimental when hundreds of millions of people have taken it.

that just means we're experimenting on hundreds of millions in real time. That was the whole point of the "emergency use".

> your rights versus those of the people you work with

no, employees don't have a legal "right" to work in a fully vaccinated office. That would imply that even if an employer wanted to give someone an exemption, then any employee could veto it.

[addingadimensio]

If an experiment is big enough it becomes a statistic

[curiousgal]

> approved religious exemption

The wording is a telltale sign that the exemption is pure BS.

[burner990]

That's the legal wording from EEOC[1]. I'll chalk up your religious prejudice to ignorance.

[1]: https://www.eeoc.gov/wysk/what-you-should-know-about-covid-1...

[TheCrownedFox]

You might not like that the exemption exists, but it's legal in the USA. Would you rather that religious beliefs were not respected by the government?

[oneoff786]

I would prefer the government was completely indifferent to religious beliefs. Because any belief can be construed as religious if you’re willing to take the position that religion is stupid and you don’t care about optics.

So yeah, I would prefer beliefs not garner you special privileges

[TheCrownedFox]

What special privileges are being garnered? The topsy-turvy world of the religious person existing as the exception rather than the rule is quite odd to me. But regardless, in the USA the religious exemption policy is incredibly diverse and welcoming, you are correct on that. You do not even need to communicate with your God in expressible ways to other people. What should be the limit on someone's divine communication and the restrictions upon the government they live under?

[Bud]

I'd prefer that we not all pretend that 2000-year-old religions somehow magically dictated that vaccines were bad. They obviously didn't. These obviously are not legitimate "religious" beliefs. Religion is transparently being used as a cloak for political beliefs fueled by misinformation.

Taking covid-related "religious" beliefs seriously only undercuts societal respect for actual religious belief.

[TheCrownedFox]

In regards to how religious beliefs are treated in the USA, it's not restricted to the major religions of the world. Someone's communication to their God does not require a many thousand year lineage, it doesn't even need to be able to be communicated in a comprehensible language to others.

It may be that some people aren't professing sincerely held religious beliefs, but if they say they do then as the law is written then it must be respected by their employer. The employer is able to ask some clarifying questions about the religious belief and they only have to provide what would be considered a reasonable accommodation.

The law can certainly be changed but besides the difficulty of the process the implications of allowing the government to gain additional control over what is an acceptable religion sounds like a great way to lead to additional religious pogroms.

[burner990]

> I'd prefer that we not all pretend that 2000-year-old religions somehow magically dictated that vaccines were bad

You don't understand any of the religious arguments if you think its just because it's a vaccine. It could be because fetal tissue was used in manufacturing these vaccines (they were). There are many other such examples.

[krona]

Then why did most of them sell it for profit?