I'm afraid you may be right. Too bad. I can't imagine all the grief that could have been avoided. — James Riley
The lack of gun control always keeps us hopping. — frank
Plus nobody in this thread addressed the huge amounts of pesticides humans drop everywhere. You guys are useless. — frank
But they weren't brought up because this thread isn't about pesticides — James Riley
which who knows if sane policies weren't implemented to find out — boethius
You beg the question that the majority of scientists are more likely to be right. If we don't know anything else except the amount of doctors that advocate for surgery vs the amount that don't , that doesn't tell us who is more likely to be right.99 doctors tell you you need surgery on your heart or else you'll probably die, and 1 says you shouldn't -- knowing nothing else, what do you do? (Assuming you want to continue living.)
Seems like an extreme example -- but that's exactly the level we're at with, again, climate change. (Actually it's said to be around 97%, but other studies have it higher, and I suspect it is.)
I'll give away the answer: you go with the 99% of doctors. It's as simple as gambling: do we put all our money on an event that wins 99% of the time, or not? Of course we go with the greater chances of success -- again, assuming we wish to win money and not lose money. — Xtrix
Oh I see, you just pick and choose your villains. Typical. — frank
Since there are people who cannot get vaccinated, people with certain allergies and medical conditions, the very young, and for now teenagers (though that may be changing), everyone is a potential threat to them, and it seems the unvaccinated are probably a somewhat bigger potential threat. — Srap Tasmaner
Given the very low risk of serious COVID-19 disease in otherwise healthy 12 to 15 year olds, considerations on the potential harms and benefits of vaccination are very finely balanced and a precautionary approach was agreed.
Unvaccinated people aren't my enemies. They're fellow citizens. — frank
This is a philosophy forum, — boethius
Lot's of policy failures throughout this pandemic — boethius
Western governments are not "pro-science" or they'd do something about climate change. — boethius
The current wave in the US was completely predictable, — boethius
there are other policies that could have been implemented since 2020 that would be a good idea anyways, — boethius
It isn’t correct to lump teenagers and the very young in with people with medical conditions when you say this. — AJJ
It seems there’s a lot of fear within this debate, on both sides, that gets masqueraded as reason. — AJJ
Certainly you could have taken a page from Isaac and chosen fat-people comorbidity, instead of pesticides — James Riley
if I were in a position to use state power to forcibly vaccinate someone against their will, I might regret resorting to force and even apologize for doing so, but protest that what I'm doing is for their own good, and for the good of others. They won't agree. What do we do? — Srap Tasmaner
I'm not sure what you're asking. — frank
All of the above is also complicated by the fact people will continue to need care for other things. This creates 2 issues. First, people come into the hospital for other reasons but happen to have coronavirus, transmit it to health workers who then transmit it to other patients and visitors in hospital for other reasons. When a place get's contaminated, they aren't disinfecting the entire place for no reason; it's just that bad in terms of persistence in the environment which quickly becomes an impossible task at a large scale. Second problem is that as health services are strained, people start dying from other things due to lack of care, so those people must be added as casualties of the pandemic. There is lot's of pneumonia anyways.
All this combines to create a complete global health catastrophe. Although there's already plenty of global health catastrophes due to poor policies, so what's one more, this one was likely preventable with policies previously in place, so is unfortunate in that regard.
Basically it's the mutabu virus, just played out in China with the US as a "don't place sycophant in charge" thematic sub-plot, and changing the main plot to preserve face rather than "the weapon" ... and infecting the entire world instead of blowing up a small town, is what I'm saying.
This may seem preemptively overly dramatic, but 700 million people are already in quarantine, self isolation or restricted travel in China, which is 10% of the global population and happened within the span of months; it's fairly reasonable to expect the same to happen to the rest of the globe within the next few months now that containment within China has completely failed and the rest of the world is where China was about 2 months ago.
The speed of this outbreak also means that it's unlikely the virus will lose much in lethality, as evolving to be less lethal as viruses normally do is an evolutionary process that takes time ... but such quick spreading doesn't create less strains than had it proliferated over a longer amount of time and so different strains may emerge that can infect people again (on-top of it, potentially being the case, that many can get the same strain again).
The only viable way to even slow down the virus significantly at this point requires basically shutting down the global economy. We're in the down-playing and denial phase from Western governments, in my opinion, to avoid pressure to take radical measures until it is too late for those to serve any purpose (as they calculate it — boethius
Really depends on age. A bad outcome radically increases with age ... which will also help spread the virus exponentially when the younger generations realize it's not a huge threat to them and need to go about their business at some point.
If you're young, main problem of travel is potentially being trapped in quarantine ... but Western governments seem to have decided to stop trying to maintain containment, but they may turn that policy on and off randomly for PR reasons. — boethius
Governments and twitter warriors blaming individuals for failed government policy is simply pathetic standard of intellectual honesty. — boethius
He's actually right about that. I've got a good video to help you get up to speed on "food-gate" if you're interested. — frank
Wouldn't that issue be settled by the Supreme Court? — frank
No, it isn’t. You have no right to harm others.
— Xtrix
Well, that's the issue isn't it.
A medical procedure is by definition harmful; so, what's your right to force / coerce people to have it? — boethius
Not forced any more than school and work vaccinations have been forced, for decades in fact.
— Xtrix
Not where I live: due to it being a forced medical procedure. Which you may disagree with, but the fact entire countries do actually implement a moratorium on forced / coerced medical procedures should be enough to support my claim there's legitimate debate on this issue ... whereas no country implements a "flat earth" based geologic and space institution. — boethius
It's not even a medical procedure, so if that was their position on masks obviously forced / coerced vaccination is essentially no-doubt unconstitutional. — boethius
It brings to mind the soldier blaming the hippie for causing the loss in Vietnam. The analogy can be spun out in a different direction, though. This war is at home. Government policy early on may have been fucked, but the protestor didn't help. Indeed, evil gubmn't was just getting oxygen from them. — James Riley
Young children, and teenagers, may indeed be at lower risk of becoming infected, and at lower risk of becoming seriously ill, but they're certainly not immune. I have a friend who teaches in a public high school that, within the first month of the new school year, had three children sick enough to be hospitalized and many more sick enough to miss school. — Srap Tasmaner
You beg the question that the majority of scientists are more likely to be right. If we don't know anything else except the amount of doctors that advocate for surgery vs the amount that don't , that doesn't tell us who is more likely to be right. — Yohan
But again, my basic point is that this issue is obviously not on the same level as "the earth is flat" or "the universe is 6000 years old" which no one here is debating. — boethius
"Medical procedure"? That's deliberately beefing up what amounts to a tiny prick of the arm. But so be it. — Xtrix
I haven't seen anyone argue this. I've seen a lot of deliberately conflating, however. — Xtrix
saw Fast Food Nation. Does that count? — James Riley
It's not deliberately conflating ... if there are governments that exist which are have zero coercive measures, and their politicians even say they couldn't legally do so without changing laws, maybe that makes the point it's obviously not basically unanimous medical ethical position to mandate / coerce / force vaccination; which was your original point. — boethius
In places where governments weren't competent ... maybe those governments aren't competent generally speaking and we can maybe see why people have low trust in their government. — boethius
The Norwegian Government has since the beginning of the pandemic maintained that vaccination against Covid-19 will be voluntary like other vaccines. Behind this benevolent attitude lurks sweeping pre-pandemic legal powers for the Minister of Health and Care Services to order compulsory vaccination if necessary, to contain a serious outbreak of a dangerous contagious disease (Article 3-8 of the Infection Control Act 1994). However, compulsory does not mean forced vaccination. Violating a vaccination order may constitute a crime punishable with fines or potentially prison (Article 8-1). — Article explaining Norwegian vaccine position
One reason for the authorities’ legal toolkit not being applied may be that the public view on vaccination is generally positive. In a survey from June 2020, 89% of the respondents agreed that vaccines in general are safe and the authorities enjoy a high level of trust. A survey from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health conducted in December 2020 before vaccination started, reported that 73% of the adult population were likely to accept a Covid-19 vaccine, while 11% were negative. However, a large scale (65,000 respondents) survey conducted in April 2021 following the AstraZeneca vaccine being put on hold in Norway due to serious side effects, showed that the attitude towards vaccination is contingent on its safety. Only 28% were likely to accept the AstraZeneca vaccine, while 91% were likely to accept a vaccine from Pfizer or Moderna and 68% would likely accept another non-specified vaccine. — Same article explaining Norwegian vaccine position
Another reason is that compulsory vaccination in the current situation would hardly be legal anyway. Suppose the public support for the vaccination program dropped, leading the Norwegian authorities to consider making vaccination compulsory, that decision like all other measures according to the Infection Control Act 1994 would have to pass a proportionality test (Article 1-5). Even if compulsory vaccination against Covid-19 would be introduced in other countries and would in principle be accepted by the ECtHR given the wide margin of appreciation, it would not necessarily pass a proportionality test in Norway. A proportionality test such as the one required by Article 1-5 of the Norwegian Infection Control Act 1994 needs two components. One is the necessity of containing the spread of the virus due to its negative effects on public health. The other is the harm caused by the infection control measure, in this case a very intrusive interference with the right to private life. While the potential negative effect of compulsory vaccination is likely equal in all countries, the potential benefit from the vaccine is not, but rather dependent on death, sickness, and infection rates in each country. In Norway, where the death rate of the virus is very low, the outcome of the proportionality test may therefore be different than in a country with a very high death rate.
Incidentally, the same logic of proportionality appears to lie behind Norway’s decision to put the AstraZeneca vaccine on hold, while it is still administered in countries with a higher death rate. — Same article explaining Norwegian vaccine position
What I am arguing here, however, is simply that these questions have far more room for legitimate debate than "the earth is flat" or "the earth is 6000 years old".
Which is the only thing being grossly conflated in this thread. — boethius
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