Is it, to some extent, a problem of naming and terminology?
When vaccines were first introduced in the UK, there was a great deal of discussion about ethics of forcing people to get them. One really cool view was, of course you can’t force people to inject a chemical into their bodies. But if people choose not to get vaccinated, it’s on them to reduce the risk to others - ie basically subject themselves to lockdown.
I think this is harder to argue with than “forced vaccination”. Sure, don’t get the jab if you don’t want to, but what are you doing instead to not endanger others?
So without getting into the weeds of it, I don’t think these offer as much protection as just staying away from people, not going to restaurants, cinemas etc. You’re also risking drawing more resources out of hospitals. UK has free general healthcare, but eg a health insurer would charge you more if you’re a smoker.
While I sympathise with people who refuse vaccines on grounds of free choice, the question stands: what are you doing instead to protect me?
Nothing. I shouldn't need to do anything to protect you. You are but a stranger, as are most people in the world. And quite frankly, I don't care about you. Nor you, I would assume, I. Outside of this conversation, we will likely never meet.
So long as I am not actively trying to harm you, I would think that would suffice. I hope you too don't burden yourself with protecting each and every being you see on the streets. So long as you've bestowed yourself protection conferred by the vaccine, I see no reason for you to go out of your way to jab a dose of Pfizer at each unvaccinated individual you encounter.
I do burden myself with these questions. My car has to be road safe for others. I can’t install razor wire on its outside - maybe makes me safer, maybe it’s just something I fancy, but I can’t. If I drive an oversized lorry into your car, which I can’t drive properly, you’d be justifiably angry, not just that it happened but that it was reckless and avoidable.
Plenty more examples if you like (building regs, gun laws, other areas of health etc), as a society we decided it’s ok to limit some personal liberties so we’re not endangering others.
If a humanist argument doesn’t apply, then well, tough. I’m in a majority demanding that a minority doesn’t make life significantly more dangerous for me.
So if you’re not getting a vaccine, what do you do instead?
EDIT the “I don’t care” argument runs out much more quickly. If you don’t care about my safety, why should I care about your convenience?
You're fine to burden yourself, just as I choose to not burden myself. We have that choice. Yeah, we decide it's okay to limit personal liberties, that's pretty fair. But forcing a vaccine onto someone is not a limit on personal liberty. It is much more than that. It's the complete disregard for that person's liberty. This is the forceful application of a medical procedure onto an unwilling participant. That is not freedom.
It's fine to be in a majority demanding a minority doesn't make life more difficult for yourself. Heck, I'd count myself in many of those categories. But unvaccinated people are doing NOTHING to make life more difficult for others. It is expressly the lack of doing anything to harm others. To assume otherwise is simply the misattribution of blame.
And since I don't care about your safety, you shouldn't care about my convenience either. That's the point. Worry about your own safety, and don't self-righteously impose your own ideals onto another. If you want to protect yourself, then you're free to do so - you have the vaccine do you not?
>But unvaccinated people are doing NOTHING to make life more difficult for others.
They are taxing the healthcare system, in some areas overwhelming it. COVID hospitalization and eventual death is typically not quick, often 4 - 6 weeks taking up ICU resources. They are spreading the virus more rampantly than the vaccinated and literally killing people, often each other.
If we could trace viral spread back to each specific individual who passed the virus on and hold that individual criminally and civilly liable for their actions, then maybe we can have the lecture on personal liberties and behaving responsibly at their own discretion, because then they'd actually have some skin in the game. We can't do that, so we're already being forced to socialize the detrimental outcomes caused by antivaxxers. Society can certainly ask for something in return for the limited liability granted to these antivaxxers and place limits on those who continue to make little to no effort to reduce their potential harm to those around them and society in general.
If the healthcare system is being taxed, why are you not pointing fingers at the failures of the healthcare system? Just because someone is unvaccinated does not mean that they are taking up ICU resources. Neither are they literally killing people - that would be the virus' doing.
Your point about tracing viral spread has some merit. But what you would find is that both vaccinated and unvaccinated people are both spreaders of the virus. It may lean more on one side, but you're effectively reducing this into an us vs. them problem, and labelling antivaxxers as if the whole spectrum of human opinion can be expressed neatly into two distinct categories.
Look, I'm not saying that we can't ask for limits so that we can feel safe in general as a society. There are certainly those who engage in more risky behavior by not wearing masks, gathering in large groups, etc. But it is important to remember that unvaccinated people are not the ones causing harm - it is the virus. To blame this minority and hence enact procedures to forcefully inject a foreign substance into their body against the subject's will is certainly of no historic precedent in Germany.
When, in many areas, 90% of ICU resources are devoted to unvaxed COVID cases, most of the problem is the unvaxed. Should we build entire hospitals solely for the unvaxed now?
When measuring negligence based on attempted mitigations taken to prevent harm or death of others, antivax would likely be considered extremely negligent, based on little to no efforts taken to reduce risk to others, or even intentional actions that purposefully increased risk.
Saying the virus kills and not the carrier/spreaders is like saying the car killed the person it hit, not the driver of the car. If you want to drive around your body with a deadly and extremely contagious disease, without mitigations, be careful who you crash into.
No one is forcibly injecting anyone, just society limiting access of those who do not care to limit their potential harm.
Should hospital capacity be dependent upon a population's susceptibility to disease? I certainly hope not. If hospitals are overrun by old people with prior medical conditions, do you blame them? You might sure, but I don't. Hospitals being overrun indicates a failure of government spending to adequately allocate proper funds in the case of emergencies. The fact that they are pointing their fingers at the unvaccinated, as you are as well, is precisely what they want to absolve themselves of blame.
Sure, I like your car analogy. But someone who is antivax != they have covid. Assuming thusly would be but a witch hunt. In your scenario, someone who is vaccinated could also be driving around their body with a deadly and contagious disease. If they are out and about because they believe the vaccine bestows them immunity, their repeated and continued exposure to others increases the likelihood of them contracting the disease more so than an antivax who stays at home all the time.
So in this case, I am saying that you are conflating the source of covid with the population that does not want a vaccine. They are not one and the same. Yet you are conveniently blaming this pandemic on your imagined construct of people you classify as "antivax".
Should I blame old people for inevitably getting old? No. We all get old, and the health system normally handles this load okay.
Should I blame someone unvaxed getting severe COVID-19, a well known and highly contagious disease with a free vax that greatly reduces the chance of severe infection? Absolutely.
COVID is particularly unique in its long ICU stays. Even for other conditions which could be blamed on poor patient decisions, 4 - 6 weeks in the ICU, and needing vents or ECMO, is not typical or widespread.
In the car analogy, we still have perfect biomarker tracking to determine exactly who, when and how long someone was infected and who exactly they infected. Perfect information. Obviously we don't have perfect information to hold people accountable, so we end up with tragedy of the commons. We need to protect the commons and the best option we have is through vaccination and limited access to the commons for those who refuse it.
No, you’re still not getting it. My example of old people with a pre-existing condition is just a placeholder for anyone who develops symptoms (of any kind or origin) enough to warrant a hospital visit, through which I point out the inconsistency of your moral positioning by contrasting it with your supposed belief that unvaccinated people are to blame for a hospital’s lack of capacity.
Feel free to blame whomever you choose, it’s not my problem. However, I will point out that the flaw in your car analogy comes when you realize that choosing to drive whilst inebriated (or without paying full attention to the road for whatever reason) is a conscious choice, whereas a carrier of the virus is an unwitting participant.
Are old people with pre-existing conditions consuming 90% of ICU resources in some areas? When comparing resource utilization of getting a preventative vaccine with the resource utilization required from a 4 - 6 week stay in the hospital, and that the health system does not typically need to run at overcapacity except when overrun by unvaccinated patients, we can confidently blame the unvaccinated for straining healthcare resources by ending up in the hospital for a completely preventable disease. It would not be an issue if more people were vaccinated, and we only needed to treat breakthrough cases. The hospitals should not need to grow larger when there is a highly effective preventative available right now for free.
When in a time of a pandemic, with a deadly and highly contagious disease, refusing the vaccine is like refusing the uber or taxi offered to you for free, and insisting on taking your car instead. They are absolutely not unwitting. They are absolutely making a conscious choice to purposefully increase their risk, and the risk of others around them. You like to talk about their personal liberties, but not about their personal responsibilities for the choices they've made.
It doesn't matter whether any distinguishable group of people consume 90% of ICU resources. It is the job of the hospital to treat them regardless. Otherwise, that is discrimination. Nor is Covid a preventable disease, as even the vaccine very clearly does not prevent all hospitalizations or transmission. This is of course, not even mentioning the various mutations that are arising which I bet will no doubt cause the vaccine to be a yearly one like that for the flu. It is very clear right now that there are multiple vaccines available right now, but the fact that hospitals are not capable of handling this is a logistical joke.
You're right, it is a conscious choice to increase risk. I didn't say it wasn't. Just like it is a conscious choice to smoke, or to carry a gun in America. And in each case, there is indeed a fine line that needs to be drawn between their personal freedoms and those of the collective. But as far as I am aware, in none of these cases is the widespread systematic elimination of choice (of taking the vaccine, of opting to smoke, or owning a gun) the logical conclusion.
No, it's not discrimination, it's triage and rationing of care. You act as if hospital resources are infinite and there aren't difficult logistical issues with expanding hospital capacity. Hospitals have already gone to extraordinary lengths to accept more unvaccinated patients. The problem lies squarely on the individuals choosing to not take a preventative vaccine, and opting for the most resource intensive treatment option, when their poor decision catches up with them.
The vaccines are still extremely effective at preventing severe COVID. Hospitalization is extremely preventable with vaccination. Please do not spread misinformation about vaccine effectiveness.
Tons of people are unhappy about guns and are asking for harder limits and controls. Shooting and killing someone is generally still frowned upon. Cigarettes are taxed at an extreme rate, smokers pay higher insurance rates, you can't smoke in buildings anymore and are asked to stay away from buildings when smoking outside in the rain. The world is a better place now that we no longer prioritize smokers damaging "liberties" and "freedoms" over the rest of the population's health.
two nightingale hospitals in UK were built that were closed down because not enough people to treat. one hospital didnt treat even one patient. this was during the later part of alpha and mid delta surge. they can open them back up surely?
Out of intellectual curiosity, how the reasoning about the following concept differ from reasoning about other public health mandates, especially vaccination? Each of the questions represents some model of collective contribution where 100% participation is desirable and every refusal to participate will lead to some bad outcomes earlier or later.
If all people in US give only $10 to cancer research charity, it would be a whopping $3.3bil. Surely it could result in hundreds or, possibly, thousands lives saved. Even more impressive if we count life-years. $10 is a measly sum for most people, not even too inconvenient, especially considering a compounding effect it can produce. It is as "little to no effort to reduce their potential harm to those around them and society in general" as possible. Some people can give more. Society where 100% of people are donating to good cause will be quite thriving, I'd imagine.
1. Should we make charitable donations, to approved institutions, of course, mandatory? On top of existing tax structure, because clearly many people have excess capacity to give? Exceptions to be approved only by qualified financier after thorough audit, because almost nobody can be trusted to assess own financial position fairly.
2. Should charitable donations be made public as a matter of policy?
3. Should hospital triage decisions be made with consideration to the past charitable donations of the patient? What if they did not donate at all? What if they donated to cancer fund, but hospitalized with diabetes? What if they donated regularly but cancelled?
4. Should we ban voluntary cancellations of regular charity payments? Only exceptions validated by commitee of experts are possible.
5. Should we run a shaming campaign branding everyone who refuses to donate "a selfish one"? After all, if they don't donate, they clearly don't care about their fellow citizen and effectively killing them? And their choices, surely attributable exclusively to irrational reasons, must have consequences? And how is it different from parent punishing their child for forgetting to brush their teeth, for example?
And a few more.
6. Should "organ donor" consent be opt-in or opt-out? Should the consent even be considered at all? Aren't those non-consenting "endangering" the society at large?
7. Should blood donation be made mandatory, only excepted by valid medical reason, validated by a doctor guided by central policy? Same questions apply as for charitable donations. I understand blood donation is a huge problem, there aren't enough donors everywhere.
8. Should autopsy be done solely at the discretion of authority, without relatives' consent whatsoever?
And a grotesque one, I have to admit, but would like to hear reasoning.
9. High testosterone level is known to be linked to aggressiveness, drive for power and domination. T influences the "lizard brain", which causes a lot of second-order harm to society, including capital crimes. It has been proven that de-sexing is beneficial for dogs, it lowers the dominance drive, aggression, makes them more mellow and convenient. It raises life expectancy as well! It is not unfeasible that it may be statistically proven, taking guidance from animal models, that overall lowering of T level in society does more good than bad and lowers overall crime and "toxic masculinity". Should we mandate full neutering of human males upon reaching 40yo? Or routinely cut one testicle from every male infant? Or only do the operation to those showing "abnormally" high T level? Should we brand "selfish" those who refuse to contribute to such scientifically-solid model?
The last one is extreme, but would help to perceive where exactly the line between socially acceptable and unacceptable violation of one's body is.
It's not hard. I don't know why you wrote all these unrelated questions. This is simply about direct personal injury from COVID infection caused by those who took no mitigation steps to prevent harm to others(COVID specific harm). They should be held liable like any other personal injury or wrongful death due to gross negligence. Simply a matter of taking individual responsibility for your individual choices. Do we actually do this? No. Unvaccinated get a special waiver to not be held accountable for their actions. All the freedom, none of the responsibilities or accountability for their actions. That is quite selfish and entitled.
Curious what you think of the flu. There isn't a flu shot mandate, but presumably you'd be pro-mandate for the flu vaccine. Are deaths caused by the flu similarly gross negligence?
The way I see it, it is selfish to force others to take a vaccine just so you could feel a bit better about your odds of survival. Now, I'm not saying that collectivist ideals are not to be pursued - just different perspectives.
We should consider mandates in cases of severe disease outbreaks, so a bad flu season could see such mandates, especially if healthcare resources were being strained.
At the moment mandates are a compromise due to lack of ability to ensure accountability for individual choices explicitly related to COVID.
Personal injury or death liability, if it was technically possible, seems like it could usurp the need for mandates, since now reckless behavior would have consequences, and those directly harmed would have recourse for compensation, so maybe no mandate would be needed.
Makes sense. I would envision a whole bunch of logistical issues associated with holding accountability. As well as complications from potential privacy implications.
When vaccines were first introduced in the UK, there was a great deal of discussion about ethics of forcing people to get them. One really cool view was, of course you can’t force people to inject a chemical into their bodies. But if people choose not to get vaccinated, it’s on them to reduce the risk to others - ie basically subject themselves to lockdown.
I think this is harder to argue with than “forced vaccination”. Sure, don’t get the jab if you don’t want to, but what are you doing instead to not endanger others?