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George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

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Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#51

Post by marklubi »

jbluepolarbear wrote: post #18
ampgt wrote: post #12

How did we get to a point where we think it’s OK to tell someone what they should do with their body? For the record: I am vaccinated and I always encourage others to do so. But what is the difference between someone choosing to not vaccinate “because of their religion” and just choosing not to vaccinate? Why is one of those OK and the other isn’t?

How did we get to the point where so many people would rather risk death and the death of many others than receive a free vaccine? They’re putting themself and all peoples that interact with them at serious risk.

How did we get to the point where so many people would rather risk unknown side effects of a free vaccine that hasn't been fully tested? They're putting themselves at unknown levels of risk. /s (sort of)

I find the constant "It's science" and other platitudes to be completely off-putting and it stinks of consensus building.

Further, the total shutdown of anyone that opposes the vaccinations raises so many red flags.

Perhaps the vaccines will turn out to be completely safe, or perhaps they won't. Without any sort of long-term studies, we have no idea which direction things will go.

Edit:

- The 1955 Cutter Incident: "In April 1955 more than 200 000 children in five Western and mid-Western USA states received a polio vaccine in which the process of inactivating the live virus proved to be defective. Within days there were reports of paralysis and within a month the first mass vaccination programme against polio had to be abandoned." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/

- 2017 dengue fever: "The analysis showed that the subset of trial participants who were inferred to be seronegative at time of first vaccination had a higher risk of more severe dengue and hospitalizations from dengue compared to unvaccinated participants." https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dengue-and-...

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#52

Post by xondono »

andi999 wrote: post #45
Grimm1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was a sterilizing vaccine, such that you couldn't spread the virus or be infected after taking it I'd say neither are okay, religious or otherwise, because your personal choice has the potential to affect a wide range of people by getting them sick, making your personal choice not so personal. Your rights end where mine begin and all of that. You shouldn't be able to spread a virus to others without consequen…

Even non sterilizing could be argued, it effects other people if you cannot find an ICU after your car accident because they are full with unvaccinated (and some vaccinated) covid patients.

The problem with this argument is that you can use it to also ban tobacco, and alcohol, and sugar, and red meat, and then you can move to things like sports, and start banning bungee jumping and rock climbing,…

There’s no obvious way to draw a line, but you definitely need one.

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#53

Post by s1artibartfast »

risyachka wrote: post #40
seppoonbi3 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo it's okay because there is no expectation of people doing everything they can for other people. You could argue that people that don't go to medical school risk lives of the others.

No one will force you to vaccinate if you move do mountains and live in isolation there. But if you want to live among others - you either - follow the rules of majority willingly - will be forced to follow them - move away and leave alone But if you want to live with others and do whatever you want and endanger them - no one will tolerate this and then will be right to.

What if the majority does not want those rules. Will you move to the mountains?

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#54

Post by junon »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #34
jbluepolarbear wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did we get to the point where so many people would rather risk death and the death of many others than receive a free vaccine? They’re putting themself and all peoples that interact with them at serious risk.

But vaccinated people face almost no risk from covid, so it doesn't affect them if people choose to not get vaccinated. Moreover, the covid vaccines will not eliminate covid from the population, as the data from Iceland clearly shows: https://twitter.com/eliaseythorsson/status/14240115421950238... The virus will continue to circulate and impact every one regardless of what percentage of the population gets vaccinated…

Not true. People who are not vaccinated become opportunities for mutation, causing variants to emerge and spread, most of which are innocuous (this happens all the time) but some can still re-infect and do harm to vaccinated people.

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#55

Post by framecowbird »

josephcsible wrote: post #42
framecowbird wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disagreeing with you regarding vaccination. However, there is a long history of the state telling people what they should do with their body. The two most obvious examples are drug usage and abortion. Why do we accept that but are suddenly outraged by vaccination? Vaccination mandates aren't new either: many countries will not even let you enter unless you are vaccinated against yellow fever. I think there ar…

> there is a long history of the state telling people what they should do with their body. The two most obvious examples are drug usage and abortion. You're only applying this argument in one direction, but it works in both directions. Most people who want the vaccine to be mandatory disagree with the state restricting drug usage and abortion. If you disagree with some policy and want to get it overturned, it seems w…

I agree, and I'm not arguing that X is OK just because it's similar to Y and Z.

What I don't like is the pretence that this is suddenly a brand new unprecedented invasion on privacy. It builds outrage and fear off the idea what the state is doing is completely unprecedented. However, that's not entirely true. That's what I find intellectually dishonest.

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#56

Post by josephcsible »

framecowbird wrote: post #55
josephcsible wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is a long history of the state telling people what they should do with their body. The two most obvious examples are drug usage and abortion. You're only applying this argument in one direction, but it works in both directions. Most people who want the vaccine to be mandatory disagree with the state restricting drug usage and abortion. If you disagree with some policy and want to get it overturned, it seems w…

I agree, and I'm not arguing that X is OK just because it's similar to Y and Z. What I don't like is the pretence that this is suddenly a brand new unprecedented invasion on privacy. It builds outrage and fear off the idea what the state is doing is completely unprecedented. However, that's not entirely true. That's what I find intellectually dishonest.

> It builds outrage and fear off the idea what the state is doing is completely unprecedented. However, that's not entirely true. That's what I find intellectually dishonest.

Fair, although there is one other angle from which I think this is unprecedented: aren't those other restrictions all things that you can't do, with this being the first one that's something that you have to do? For example, consider freedom of speech. Exceptions that compel speech are much rarer than exceptions that prohibit speech.

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#57

Post by Grimm1 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #48
Grimm1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was a sterilizing vaccine, such that you couldn't spread the virus or be infected after taking it I'd say neither are okay, religious or otherwise, because your personal choice has the potential to affect a wide range of people by getting them sick, making your personal choice not so personal. Your rights end where mine begin and all of that. You shouldn't be able to spread a virus to others without consequen…

What if there was a medical treatment prbabisticly reduced aggression, violence, or other antisocial behavior?

Well today if you were to punch me you'd likely be on trial for assault, and if you killed me, murder. Antisocial behaviors generally aren't legally punishable until they're taken out on someone else.

In this case, if you choose not to get the vaccine and then through contact tracing or some other mechanism an outbreak is traced to you when you could have gotten a vaccine? Assault sounds correct to me and if you killed someone through inaction, then something equivalent to negligent homicide sounds correct to me. You're not necessarily malicious but I'd say fairly negligent.

Not that that's what is currently the case, but it seems fair to me and in that world, rolling the dice on criminal charges instead of just getting a vaccine that 169million people in US alone currently have taken with no issue seems like a dumb dice roll to me, but most people have steadily proven to me over the last few years that they're not great at risk calculation over and under.

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#58

Post by criticaltinker »

Grimm1 wrote: post #21
ampgt wrote: post #12

How did we get to a point where we think it’s OK to tell someone what they should do with their body? For the record: I am vaccinated and I always encourage others to do so. But what is the difference between someone choosing to not vaccinate “because of their religion” and just choosing not to vaccinate? Why is one of those OK and the other isn’t?

If this was a sterilizing vaccine, such that you couldn't spread the virus or be infected after taking it I'd say neither are okay, religious or otherwise, because your personal choice has the potential to affect a wide range of people by getting them sick, making your personal choice not so personal. Your rights end where mine begin and all of that. You shouldn't be able to spread a virus to others without consequen…

For the sake of discussion, here are some counter-arguments:

> If this was a sterilizing vaccine

There's no question that if we had a vaccine that provided sterilizing immunity, the calculus for public health policy would be affected. However, we have to account for the inevitability of viral mutation and evolution. This idea goes hand in hand with the fact that immunity is a spectrum, and just because a vaccine provides sterilizing immunity now, doesn't guarantee it will continue to do so indefinitely and for everyone.

> bodily autonomy doesn't come without large measurable consequences to society at large

Similarly, compulsory mass vaccination does not come without significant risks to public health. There is a very real and non-trivial risk that compulsory mass vaccination would create selective pressure that further enhances the fitness of the virus, leading to immune escape which manifests as decreased protection for individuals who have acquired immunity through vaccination or natural infection [1][2][3][4][5]. Analogous to antibiotic resistance, the threat of vaccine resistance is a strong argument for diversifying viral elimination strategies across multiple molecular targets and therapeutic modalities.

Finally, the argument for compulsory mass vaccination does not account for the fact that individuals who acquire immunity through natural infection are at least equally well protected as vaccinated individuals [6][7][8]. And this point leads us back to the crux of OP - it violates medical ethics to order unnecessary procedures.

[1] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/

[2] Can we predict the limits of SARS-CoV-2 variants and their phenotypic consequences? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti...

[3] Why does drug resistance readily evolve but vaccine resistance does not? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016...

[4] The adaptive evolution of virulence: a review of theoretical predictions and empirical tests https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26302775/

[5] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...

[6] SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf

[7] Longitudinal analysis shows durable and broad immune memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection with persisting antibody responses and memory B and T cells https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37...

[8] Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v...

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#59

Post by framecowbird »

josephcsible wrote: post #56
framecowbird wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and I'm not arguing that X is OK just because it's similar to Y and Z. What I don't like is the pretence that this is suddenly a brand new unprecedented invasion on privacy. It builds outrage and fear off the idea what the state is doing is completely unprecedented. However, that's not entirely true. That's what I find intellectually dishonest.

> It builds outrage and fear off the idea what the state is doing is completely unprecedented. However, that's not entirely true. That's what I find intellectually dishonest. Fair, although there is one other angle from which I think this is unprecedented: aren't those other restrictions all things that you can't do, with this being the first one that's something that you have to do? For example, consider freedom of…

Yeah that's super interesting. Is an action morally any different to a lack of action?

This is like the train trolley: where you can either phrase it as doing nothing, or pushing a lever. People apply much more stringent moral codes when there is action involved, or even when the fat man is actually pushed by hand.

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#60

Post by cycomanic »

inter_netuser wrote: post #44
fatbird wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the point where they not only refuse the vaccines, but take Ivermectin, an anti-parasatic proven for farm livestock because the buzz in the conservative monkeysphere says it's a cure-all.

there is some evidence that ivermectin has antiviral activity in-vitro, tested on primate cells. Many drugs have effects that are outside of on-label indications, as those are really just for marketing purposes. Physicians are absolutely free to prescribe things off-label, do so routinely, and in fact in many situations the majority of prescriptions happen to be off-label. The only concern here is 1) that concentrati…

But the argument was that "the vaccines are too unproven so we should not trust them" and the solution is to take a medication that has seen orders of magnitude less testing and is known to be toxic (there are reports of large increases to calls to poison control because of this)?!
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