This is correct. I know people as old as 90 who got infected while being vaccinated and having extremely mild. I have known people have that age unvaccinated who have died (yes of course this is anecdotal) but considering the thousands of cases I personally have viewed and closed...well that isn't.
. As for more germane examples... I wouldnt be surprised if regular hospitals (at least in Australia) had far lower positivity rates per exposure than their neighbouring businesses.
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I'm told that those who didn't wear masks or get vaccinated (both of which I did) take up hospital bed space and it's unfair. Sure, sure. But how many beds in that hospital are full of people who did all kinds of things that could be considered unfair? If you haven't been in an emergency room on any given night in the last ten years, let me help you, it's full of illegal immigrants, welfare cases, and drug addicts. I'm none of those things. Is that fair? Am I getting too deep? Conflating issues?
Be well my friends.
To me the point being made was that one of the main arguments for the vaccines was that since unvaccinated take up beds if they get sick it is not fair to the society at large and thus these people should be forced or at least pressured into being vaccinated. The argument being that since their actions affect others and society at large they loose the right to make this personal medical decision. As a society we make these choices all the time, many freedoms are taken away from individuals for the good of the society, this is normal and the only way to have a functional society. The question then becomes, is being vaccinated from covid falls under the same paradigm of forgoing individual freedom for the good of others. Before omicron it looked like forcing people to vaccinate was a net positive and that vaccines, mandates, school closures, etc were more important than individual freedoms. After omicron it is not as clear. Before omicron it seemed that vaccinated were unlikely to get the virus and were unlikely to spread it, so it made sense to vaccinate all to protect people who couldn’t be vaccinated. Now, it seems like vaccinated are not less likely to spread the virus. If true, then being vaccinated becomes an individual choice except that we again come back to unvaccinated taking up beds, which is unfair. This is similar to people who participate in other dangerous activities, such as playing sports, skiing, riding bikes, motorcycles, etc. These people put extra burden on our medical system purely by choice and for personal enjoyment. There is no benefit to others when I go skiing, bolder climbing or other activities I participate in. Technically, I should be either forbidden from doing these things or at least pay out of pocket if I get hurt. After all this was one of the proposals some here made for the unvaccinated who contracted covid and ended up in a hospital. I think the other examples given were in the same spirit. Most societies agree that for good of all basic emergency care should be given to anyone. Shouldn‘t then unvaccinated fall under the same umbrella, shouldn’t we then not use “taking up beds” as an argument for forcing vaccinations?
Strongly encouraged, maybe?
The analogy is somewhat strained because people who suffer skiing accidents don't overwhelm hospitals, whereas unvaccinated Covid patients brought our hospital system to its knees not that long ago. If people suffered skiing accidents at the same rate as people get Covid, we'd probably make skiing illegal, seeing that we can't vaccinate against skiing accidents
It's not an easy call to make. It balances individual rights against society's needs as a whole. There will always be grey areas.
All good points and the reason I wrote that individual rights have to be curtailed to one degree or another for any society to work. The question is always to what degree and specifically if mandatory covid vaccines and other measures should fall under this umbrella. Like you say we already have many vaccine requirements for day care, schools and universities as well as for some jobs. The difference is that these required vaccines generally prevent vaccinated from getting the disease and when boosters are needed they are usually needed many years apart. I could be wrong, but I can‘t think of any required vaccines where one needs to be boosted very often and where breakthrough cases for vaccinated are very common. In any case my point was that the situation as it stands now is not very clear. To me vaccinating before omicron seemed like a no brained, but I am not sure now. I’ve had covid twice, before vaccines were available to me and after I got vaccinated. My coworker that is being fired for not vaccinating hasn’t had covid even once. I am not convinced that “strongly encouraging“ him is the right thing to do at this point.Strongly encouraged, maybe?
By the way, mandatory vaccination isn't anything new. We currently have a whole raft of mandatory vaccinations.
I also remember that vaccination against smallpox was mandatory when I grew up in Germany. Measles vaccination is currently compulsory in Germany as well.
The analogy is somewhat strained because people who suffer skiing accidents don't overwhelm hospitals, whereas unvaccinated Covid patients brought our hospital system to its knees not that long ago. If people suffered skiing accidents at the same rate as people get Covid, we'd probably make skiing illegal, seeing that we can't vaccinate against skiing accidents
It's not an easy call to make. It balances individual rights against society's needs as a whole. There will always be grey areas.
Note though that we don't hesitate, for example, to make seatbelts mandatory, and most people don't have much of a problem with that, whereas, many years ago, a lot of people tried to stop compulsory seatbelt laws. It is similar with firearms here. I don't have a right to bear a firearm. Instead, it is something that I have to apply for, provide good reasons for wanting a firearm, and I'm allowed to have one only if society judges me trustworthy enough.
And, of course, I can't go and drive my car when I'm over the limit without risking some serious fines and/or imprisonment.
These things all impinge on my "rights" in some way. Personally, I have no problem with mandatory vaccinations (which, as I said, we have quite a lot of already). Once the cost of treating needlessly sick people gets large enough, governments usually clamp down and declare "enough is enough". For example, we currently have a "no jab, no pay" policy for child vaccination. If, as a parent, I refuse the vaccinate my child, I lose a bunch of benefits, and my child cannot attend a daycare centre. I would consider that "strong encouragement."
Homosexuality was illegal not that long ago, and it is still illegal in many countries today. That is a much harsher intrusion on personal rights than mandatory vaccination. But there was a time and place where that was considered proper and in the interest of society. Go figure…
At any rate, there is plenty of precedence of governments stepping in and severely curtailing people's "rights". It's nothing new, and we do it all the time.
I take your point. We are dealing with iteration four or five of the virus by now. Initially, it looked like the vaccines provided very good protection against getting infected, even if it was not perfect and the protection waned over time. This seemed to work pretty well until the end of Delta. Once Omicron showed up, the vaccines were much less effective at preventing infection, but still seem to be doing a good job at preventing severe disease. Unfortunately, the whole thing is a bloody arms race
Not disagreeing with anything that you said, but Moab Utah did strongly discourage mountain bikers from coming there early in the pandemic to keep them from taking up the few hospital beds that they had.The analogy is somewhat strained because people who suffer skiing accidents don't overwhelm hospitals, whereas unvaccinated Covid patients brought our hospital system to its knees not that long ago. If people suffered skiing accidents at the same rate as people get Covid, we'd probably make skiing illegal, seeing that we can't vaccinate against skiing accidents
Yes, it appears that there are a number of problems with his assertions.
It was meant as a compliment. You set the standard for thought before words around here. And because you're so damn gracious about it, no one ever feels dumb when they're wrong (not that I would know first hand
You keep harping on about cloth masks and non-N95 masks. You might as well state that "masks that don't work do not work". Very deep…
Mandates not working and masks not working are 2 different things but you like to use it interchangeably. Fake news Eric.
