[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.

[Eisenstein]

You make a very good point, but like in times of invasion where conscription is something I would argue is necessary, in times of other emergency then there is the possibility we must give up some independence of our person and perform compulsory acts. This may not be as obvious as getting a needle jabbed into your arm, but rationing water and food, joining in labor to clear wreckage/debris or rebuild, or taking arms in defense during invasion are all examples of similar situations.

I recognize that it is ill-advised to normalize forced medical intervention and I thank you for pointing out that my initial comment appears to be doing that, and I shall make a point to reflect on this, but I do maintain that during times of crisis the state/society should have the right to compel individuals in ways that are otherwise not acceptable.

[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...