England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says • Hacker News Board

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#331

Post by hervature » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

junon wrote: post #293

hervature wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your argument that only "PhD in biohemistry or something similar" can make decisions about the vaccine? I think that's incredibly patronizing to the vast majority of humanity. There is literally vaccines that earned FDA approval in recent memory that were later found to cause problems in babies [1]. If people are concerned about vaccines, the best way to deal with it is to address concerns, show them the data. Not…

> Not calling them stupid for not having a PhD. GP simply stated that we should be consulting experts in the fields, not laypeople, when it comes to things of a scientific nature. These were your words, not theirs.

They said:

> If it’s not a PhD in biochemistry or something similar, then it’s not relevant to their decision making abilities

In my opinion, that is much closer to "if you don't have a PhD in biochemistry, you can't don't deserve to make a decision (i.e. stupid)" than "listen to experts".

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

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Post by htkgigktmrnnr » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

thepasswordis wrote: post #257

htkgigktmrnnr wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The graph here you are looking for is the one that shows the percentage of staffed beds and icu beds occupied. Notice that it is entirely flat. So why did hospitals declare that they have no ICU beds available and that they are sending patients out of state? > At least 53 Texas hospitals have no available ICU capacity, according to numbers reported to the federal government during the week ending Aug. 5. In Austin,…

I don’t know. But what I do know is that data will speak much more clearly than somebody’s news article. Those hospitals at 90%: what is their base load? The hospitals with no beds: what is their base load? These things make very profitable news articles, but they don’t do a very good job of informing.

The news article is literally quoting hospitals saying they are out of ICU beds.

But you trust a dashboard more...

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#333

Post by tinus_hn » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #290

tinus_hn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For people who are vaccinated and still get infected (i.e., “breakthrough infections”), there is a risk of transmission to others. Not sure why you’d want to suppress that truth. It’s just a little vague on how big the chances are.

Nobody is suppressing anything. The vaccines help but not 100%. You're rounding everything down to "doesn't work". Would you say condoms "don't work" because they are not 100%?

I would if they worked 42%.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-42-in...

Which is just a random result for searching. I’m sure there other numbers to be found, but they are nowhere near 100%.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

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Post by jlokier » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #324

jlokier wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You now have the immunity, so act like it! This is factually incorrect. The Covid-19 vaccines significantly reduce symptoms, risk of hospitalisation, risk of death, and transmission rate. They are worth it on balance if you care about your own health, and/or the health of other people you interact with, especially those close to you, for almost everyone above a fairly low age. But they do not provide complete immun…

> Which means other people's behaviour still affects you. We have multiple vaccines for well over 9 months now. Anybody who needs them can get them for free. Covid is never going away -- it is endemic. Dragging this pandemic game past vaccines is unethical as hell. People need to accept that covid is always around now and get back to actual life. It may come as a shock to some people but there is an entire world of p…

Sure, you can weigh up your value system how you like.

My comment was to address the parent's serious misleading factual idea about immunity, and provide some nuanced background to readers who may find that useful, as the GP's summary is a false but attractively simplistic belief that a lot of people hold about the vaccines. For some people that misunderstanding is causing them to act against their own personal values.

Even if you believe people should act according to their personal values regardless of consequence to others, you probably believe people should be entitled to the correct basic facts if they want them.

I have met too many people who said "I've had the vaccine so I can't get Covid", "I've had the vaccine so I can't give anyone Covid", or "I've had Covid so I can't give anyone Covid", and then walked right up close to other people in confined spaces with other people (service workers etc) unable to leave.

Presumably some of those people believe what they are saying, and would choose based on their own personal values to act differently if they knew they had misunderstood that there are different kinds of vaccine immunity.

Read my comment carefully and you will hopefully see it does not contain value judgements about how people should choose to respond to Covid. (Even if other comments of mine do.)

I agree with you that "Covid is always around now". But that is an over-simplistic, black-and-white summary of something quite nuanced. I'll try to summarise my view in a black and white way (always misleading for a nuanced topic unfortunately):

There is "ok endemic" and "bad endemic". It can still go either way.

Most people want the "ok endemic" version instead of "bad endemic". And they don't know how to get it, so rely on government and other major actors to help chart a path.

To someone who gets that there is a difference, people who say "but it's going to be endemic" as though that settles everything, sound like they are saying "I don't care if it's bad endemic, and you shouldn't care either, stop bleating".

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#335

Post by gruez » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

skytreader wrote: post #306

gruez wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As I mentioned in another comment, let's not forget that preventing spread through all these measures is all in service of a greater goal: avoiding strain on public health infra. If the ends justifies the means, what other public health interventions should we carry out, even in cases where there's no direct harm to society[1]? Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US. Should we have blood pressure/cho…

> Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US. Should we have blood pressure/cholesterol "passports" to pressure people into being healthier? Is heart disease exponentially contagious with the potential to strain medical resources in a matter of days? Again, these aren't interventions against social freedoms, rather an intervention to prevent a public service from being DDoSed, so to speak. The measures a m…

>Is heart disease exponentially contagious with the potential to strain medical resources in a matter of days?

How is this relevant when vaccinated people are still contagious?

>Again, these aren't interventions against social freedoms, rather an intervention to prevent a public service from being DDoSed, so to speak.

Just like banning encryption isn't against social freedoms, but rather an intervention to prevent baddies from winning?

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

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Post by throwaway316943 » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #262

kuraudo wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take issue with this comparison: just because the prior 'experiments' have been failures does not mean that future efforts which utilize entirely different methods will be. The war on drugs was already highly criticized for its ineffectiveness on several accounts: there is definitely a way to eradicate the problem, but those were not it and even people at the time knew it.

What methods would you suggest? My parent said "ban tobacco".

To be clear I was not advocating banning all of those things, I was saying that mandating vaccines is as counterproductive as trying to revive prohibition or enforce weight loss.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

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Post by throwaway316943 » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #115

throwaway316943 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every day 28 people die in the US from drunk driving crashes https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving 261 per day from excessive alcohol use https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-death... Alcohol consumption directly affects people who do not consume it in a multitude of ways from the monetary cost of increased demand on the health care system, police, prisons and damage to public property t…

Drunk driving is very illegal. If we could identify unvaccinated people who infected others and punish that with jail time, would you be happy about that?

Would the people who were infected even want to press charges? Assuming they were vaccinated, they would probably have an extremely mild case, if they were unvaccinated then they would essentially be arguing a case against themselves.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

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Post by longthrow1 » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

h_anna_h wrote: post #173

sudosysgen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's completely and incontrovertibly bullshit that vaccines don't help unvaccinated people. Vaccines drastically reduce hospitalisation. That frees up medical resources for everyone, especially those who aren't vaccinated and those that need care. We are already seeing medical procedures get postponed and hospital staff being pushed at the breaking point. The help to your community of being vaccinated is simply huge.

> Vaccines drastically reduce hospitalisation. That frees up medical resources for everyone, especially those who aren't vaccinated and those that need care. Don't hospitalise unvaccinated people who have covid then, problem solved.

Also don't hospitalise people who refuse to take care of their own health. They're a terrible and disproportionate burden on health care. We'll set a body fat % cutoff for care.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#339

Post by TeeMassive » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #236

TeeMassive wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those IDs are not meant to 1) show your medical history which is a protected right and 2) is used as a way to coerce a medical intervention which is against free and informed consent. Forcing medical interventions in the name of the public good has always degenerated in the worse atrocities and abuses in history.

> 1) show your medical history which is a protected right Your medical history is not a "protected right." The people who provide medical care to you are not allowed to release your medical records without your consent.

> Your medical history is not a "protected right."

What are you talking about? It is under the 5h and 14th amendments and under similar rights in other jurisdictions.

https://healthcare.uslegal.com/records/sources-of-protection...

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

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Post by throwaway316943 » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #281

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you also jail the folks ho were vaccinated but still infected others?

No. I don't even have a strong opinion about punishing people for infecting others through negligence. But I think it is worth bringing up whenever anti-vaxxers bring up alcohol and drunk driving.

To be clear, I am not opposed to vaccines. I think the current vaccine is the best option for people at high risk of negative outcomes due to COVID. What I am opposed to is coercion by the state on something that is a personal choice. Calling this argument “antivaxx” is another example of the disingenuous way people are behaving. It’s a smear campaign that is being parroted without any critical thought.