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

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#371

Post by shkkmo » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

TeeMassive wrote: post #355

shkkmo wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forcing medical interventions in the name of the public good has always degenerated in the worse atrocities and abuses in history. Then you have examples of the "worst atrocities and abuses in history" that were due to schools requiring vaccinations?

Is this a joke? Japan's Unit 731 The Nazi medical experiments MK Ultra in the US and Canada and elsewhere in the world Lobotomy and the other psychiatric abuses The human atomic bomb and nuclear radiation experiments Tuskegee syphilis experiments Buck v. Bell which game way to +70k forced sterilizations, which by the way relied upon Jacobson v. Massachusetts where the State forced vaccination upon someone who had adv…

Every one of those examples has nothing to do with requiring vaccinations to attend schools. Only the last one has any relation to vaccine mandates at all and the causal link there is somewhat tenous given the sordid particulars of Buck v Bell (including the deliberate incompetence of Buck's lawyer). It isn't clear that case would have gone differently without the Jacobsen v. Massachusetts precedent.

Given the strength which which you made your claim, I thought you would have better evidence to support it.

I do think that the medical attrocities you list have had a lasting and deleterious effect on public trust of government medical ethics and contribute significantly to vaccine hestitancy.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#372

Post by sudosysgen » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

thepasswordis wrote: post #220

sudosysgen wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of argument is there to cite a single state's COVID ICU utilization as an argument? First of all, that's not total ICU utilization, which is the metric that should interests you. Illinois, the state you cherry-picked, has only 508 ICU beds remaining out of 3127. That's one doubling away from disaster. Here's an example of people dying because they couldn't find an ICU bed : https://meaww.com/ray-demonia-car…

78% ICU utilization is about the base load for ICUs. Hospitals are businesses. They don’t just create tons of empty ICU beds and then never use them. If you are getting your information from for profit blogs and magazines then I’d suggest doing a quick analysis on their motivations. Do you think they have more motivation to get you to click on their products, or more motivation to give you valid (but boring) informat…

I'm really not. 78% utilization is completely unsustainable when 20% of the utilization is from COVID and infection rates can easily double in the span of two weeks.

78% may have been the past utilization, however nowadays use of the ICU removing COVID patients is around 60%. So clearly there has been some level of denial of care. And even then we are close to the breaking point.

I think you're not making the point you think you're making with that data. 78% utilization is a lot when a very significant part of that is from an infectious disease known to spiral out of control easily.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#373

Post by EliRivers » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #265

edent wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to show my licence to get in my car and drive. For any normal use of a car, there is no requirement to show a licence before doing so. Have you ever applied for a library card? Most libraries will give you one without any verifiable form of ID. And the card itself certainly isn't ID.

> I don't need to show my licence to get in my car It would likely be difficult to buy a car without it, and obviously you could not rent it (yes, code and blabla, it's just a proxy for it). > Have you ever applied for a library card? Yes, and in fact they were pretty fastidious with validating that I lived in the area they serve (that might be because I have a funny accent, but still). I don't remember how I managed…

It would likely be difficult to buy a car without it

Did you definitely mean this? I have never had to present a driving license to buy a car. I don't see the link; the license isn't to own a car, it's to drive one. Unless you're thinking of places where one does need a license just to own a vehicle?

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#374

Post by jjgreen » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

_Microft wrote: post #300

jjgreen wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't work in the UK since we don't have ID cards.

How do you identify yourself if required for some reason? For example when interacting with an office or when you have to cast your ballot in an election?

For offices, typically a utilities bill (with your name and address on it) will suffice. Voting only requires a voting card which is sent to your address. Registration to vote is mandatory and requires your National Insurance number, but the penalty for not registering is small (a fine of £80 IIRC) and rarely enforced.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#375

Post by Nexxxeh » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #207

tchalla wrote: post #39

> "I've never liked the idea of saying to people you must show your papers or something to do what is just an everyday activity, but we were right to properly look at it. We regularly show papers for everyday activities - library card for reading books, ID for a hotel stay, driving license for driving a car, ID to pickup a parcel etc.

> We regularly show papers for everyday activities - library card for reading books, ID for a hotel stay, driving license for driving a car, ID to pickup a parcel etc. This is a classic demonstration that "slippery slope" isn't a fallacy. First you need a driving license. Privacy conscious people objected. You don't need to show your driving license to drive, was the response, only if you break traffic laws or get in…

>Privacy conscious people object. Now the response is, hey, you already have to show your driving license if you get pulled over for speeding, what's the difference?

The main objections to vaccine passports in England aren't privacy, they're that it discriminates against those who refuse to get vaccinated.

>And you don't have to show your vaccine passport if you, um, never go outside again.

You'd have to show your vaccine passport if you want to partake in proportionately high risk activities where you not only have risk to yourself, but you also pose a risk to others. And it's [almost] always places you have to take ID anyway, to prove your age.

Why should those who chose to not do the socially responsible thing of getting vaccinated, get to amplify the risk to those who do?

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#376

Post by eynsham » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

azalemeth wrote: post #44

cstross wrote: post #2

Note this is specific to England . Other countries in the UK are following their own course -- the Scottish government agreed in principle to introduce vaccine passports as of a week ago and will require them for entry to large venues from October 1st: https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-vaccine-passports-requir... The NHS is a fully devolved issue, with separate NHS organizations in Wales, England, Northern Ireland,…

This is very true. I personally find it mad that the UK is the nation with the highest covid infection rate in western europe, with ~30k new cases/day. Long covid is a real, debilitating condition and if anything is going to affect the young -- who are least vaccinated -- the most, thus creating a long-term disease burden and morbidity cost on both those individuals and the country as a whole. Ignoring the human cost…

I think of restrictions as falling into three buckets— - restrictions we could put up with ~forever, - restrictions we could put up with temporarily while waiting for something (e.g., vaccines), - restrictions we could put up with temporarily to mitigate some disaster by delay tactics (e.g. March lockdown.)

Now the question is what further restrictions now would do.

I think there are some things we should definitely encourage as not very intrusive (especially when it’s encouragement not law)—e.g., using FFP stuff rather than surgical/cloth masks in crowded spaces when possible, ventilation, &c.

I don’t think that we’re really waiting for anything though. We are not throwing everything at getting better vaccines. Nor are we going to massively boost vaccine uptake. (Maybe we should wait for the 12-15 category I suppose, since then we’d be closer to herd immunity.)

Finally, the NHS is not imminently going to be inundated. This might change in a few weeks. But delay right now isn’t necessary to avoid a March 2020/December 2020 apocalypse.

So in my view restrictions now would merely delay the inevitable since nothing would actually change. This is in contrast to last year when we were waiting for the enormous breakthrough of vaccines, or in February/March as we vaccinated the vast majority of adults. I do think it would be a plausible strategy to dampen things for a month whilst vaccinating those aged 12-15 though—I suspect vaccination would do nearly all the work there though. (On a tangent, I don’t see why we don’t just administer the first dose to them anyway—even if the second is too risky the first is much safer.)

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#377

Post by eynsham » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #80

MatteoFrigo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the right to be unhappy. However, looking at the latest data from the UK at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... , it is not clear whether pushing for more vaccines will change the situation in any way that makes you happy. For example, that report says that 97% of the blood donors has some kind of antibodies, either from vaccine or previous infection. This number is almost 100% fo…

> pushing for more vaccines will change the situation in any way that makes you happy. Given that even highly-vaccinated localities like Iceland (74% vaccinated) keep seeing waves of COVID cases and that COVID waves peak and decline without countries achieving the 90% rate vaccine proponents suggest as the threshold for herd immunity, we have to begin seriously questioning the public health case for mandatory univers…

In the UK since we have barely any hospital beds I can see a strong case for universal vaccination to avoid inundating hospitals. One could also simply deprioritise the unvaccinated (though the privacy problem would arise.) The only politically palatable alternative has been lockdowns it seems.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#378

Post by javagram » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC

freeflight wrote: post #168

javagram wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overweight and elderly is not something you can fix in an hour with a free vaccine shot. Don’t you see the obvious difference?

The shot doesn’t work in an hour nor does it fix the actual problem. Nor is it really as simple as just trying to bully everybody into getting injected with vaccines that have been developed and pushed trough regulatory approval in record times. The last time something like that happened, during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, it turned out the people skeptical of rushed vaccinations were actually the ones with the right ide…

I’m talking about the amount of time and effort one has to put in. Losing weight can take years even for a determined person, recommended weight loss speed is usually 1-2 lbs per week at most.

To get vaccinated you have to just drop by the pharmacy during your grocery store run, wait about 15 minutes after the shot for observation, and it’s complete. (If taking a 2 shot vaccine, repeat the same 30 minute task 4 weeks later).

Asking people to become non-obese before entering society is an entirely different level of effort. Asking people to become non-elderly is an impossibility at our current or near-future level of science.

H1N1 was nowhere near as dangerous as COVID-19. And even in that case there’s no reason to believe getting the flu vaccine that year was a bad idea. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps... “ In 2018, a study team including CDC scientists analyzed and published vaccine safety data on adjuvanted pH1N1 vaccines (arenaprix-AS03, Focetria-MF59, and Pandemrix-AS03) from 10 global study sites. Researchers did not detect any associations between the vaccines and narcolepsy.”

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#379

Post by nobodyandproud » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

angelzen wrote: post #362

nobodyandproud wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s like saying sober drivers can cause accidents. It’s the likelihood, and willful the personal choice that leads to a higher of incident which society decides whether or not to tolerate.

Those that admit they are drunk and take an Uber instead of driving do not cause accidents. It's the 'Oh, it's just a couple of beers (narrator voice: and two vodka shots, and three martinis.)' that choose to drive while impaired that cause most of the accidents.

Yes, because they chose not to drive while drunk. If the uber driver kills someone while driving, that’s not on the person who hailed the uber.

Someone who infects another after getting vaccinated falls into the same bucket.

They did their due diligence by being responsible. The infector in that case isn’t at fault.

In your analogy, the vaccine is the taxi driver.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#380

Post by spookthesunset » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #369

spookthesunset wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, at some point we must return to what life was like prior to march of 2020. There is nothing unique or special about covid that requires anything but a full return of actual normal. Mankind has lived with respiratory illness since, well, forever.

Says who? What if we have been doing it wrong until now? Maybe, going forward, we should have proper vaccine passports which include everything , not only COVID-19. Have you had all your shots, or not.

That sounds like a super shitty way to live. A step short of dystopia. I’ll pass.