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Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

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Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#391

Post by RedBeetDeadpool »

donohoe wrote: post #239
quaffapint wrote: post #66

I'm vaccinated and boostered by my own choice. My problem with mandates is where does it end? Why this mandate and not other mandates? Who gets to decide that?

I'm vaccinated and boostered by my own choice Great! The problem is that vaccines don't protect society unless a critical-mass of people are vaccinated. The estimate for COVID-19 is that roughly 70% to 85% of the population will need to be vaccinated to reach the herd immunity threshold. USA is at about 63% fully vaccinated (76% had at least one dose). where does it end? It ends when the the threat subsides. Why this…

Herd immunity is for the herd.

The US is where it is because we have individuals willing to fight for individual rights. If casualty of individuals is the cost to keep individuality in this country then I say let it be.

The vaccinated are protected and therefore you are safe (assuming you are vaccinated). So why do you need to proselytize your doctrine on those around you? You're allowed your own opinions, chant your religious beliefs, but don't turn it into law.

You might believe a mandate might be the logical solution, and maybe by some computer models it will save the greatest number of people, but its still a breach of individual rights.

I personally believe what makes the US great isn't the number of people but the quality of people. And I'd rather give up the quantity than the quality. Sure we may end up having a higher proportion of herd people if we dont mandate and many of the individuals end up dying, but we won't have a government that can control those individuals as easily, and that's what matters most.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#392

Post by laurent92 »

enchiridion wrote: post #375
vanusa wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having anyone's freedoms dependent on available hospital capacity is a terrible way to run a society. So is letting people die from otherwise treatable injuries and infections so someone else can enjoy their "freedom" to ... you know what I'm driving at.

Yes, exactly. The world is dangerous and full of risks. Freedom is literally worth sacrificing lives for. This is a fundamental founding idea of the US.

And many people, given the choice between money or freedom, choose freedom, even if it can make them poor. Heck, Snowden chose to relinquish wealth to defend everyone’s liberty.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#393

Post by srcreigh »

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #372
srcreigh wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Encouraging natural immunity is asking for hospitals to get filled up by people giving themselves covid on purpose. This affects non covid patients too. I suspect that's why the media doesn't do it.

This response is actually an example of what I'm talking about. The comment that I replied to was explaining how the segment of the population that is a candidate for giving themselves covid while being high risk is (and has been) shrinking out of existence. Meanwhile, there is a much larger (and growing) cohort that continues to be harrased if they (fairly) decide they don't need these vaccines, and the harrasment i…

Why doesn't someone make the point that 95%+ (or 98%+ etc) of Americans are protected via natural immunity or vaccines and back it up with data?

Once that point is made, the discouraging natural immunity argument can stop because hospitals can't overfill anymore.

However until that point can be made[0] I think the "don't encourage natural immunity" position will prevent the most deaths.

By the way, I also don't condone harassment of unvaccinated people or vaccination as a requirement for employment etc either. Those are separate issues to me.

[0]: I tried looking for it but CDC data is only sept 2021 and estimated only 146M infections https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#394

Post by yibg »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #313
tzs wrote: post #30

Something from the NYT mailing list yesterday: > The Covid vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing serious illness. If you’re vaccinated, your chances of getting severely sick are extremely low. Even among people 65 and older, the combination of the vaccines’ effectiveness and the Omicron variant’s relative mildness means that Covid now appears to present less danger than a normal flu. > For the unvaccinated,…

> I'd say the answer to that should be determined by the hospital capacity. If a region has sufficient hospital capacity that it would not be overwhelmed by the increase in COVID cases among the unvaccinated go ahead and lift most restrictions. Having anyone's freedoms dependent on available hospital capacity is a terrible way to run a society. Note that these freedoms were debated and won in an era where medicine wa…

Freedoms aren’t considered in isolation. Maintaining freedom for some means removing freedom for others some times. In this case the “freedom” to get timely treatment for those that need it.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#395

Post by e40 »

laurent92 wrote: post #385
e40 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate this casting of the issue as "freedom". It's absurd. My "freedom" to live because I have a medical issue but cannot get treatment will be severely impacted if hospitals are overrun with patients and worn out workers. See, we can both play the "freedom" game.

We don’t owe you the right to live with a deadly disease. You cannot mandate others to perform actions just so you can live, if you wouldn’t live naturally.

We do it all the time. You are mandated to get a license to drive a car so that you don't have a higher chance of killing people.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#396

Post by pessimizer »

laurent92 wrote: post #385
e40 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate this casting of the issue as "freedom". It's absurd. My "freedom" to live because I have a medical issue but cannot get treatment will be severely impacted if hospitals are overrun with patients and worn out workers. See, we can both play the "freedom" game.

We don’t owe you the right to live with a deadly disease. You cannot mandate others to perform actions just so you can live, if you wouldn’t live naturally.

Of course you can. You're just making this up.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#397

Post by Lammy »

sib301 wrote: post #363
skillpass wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - I am worried about taking hospital capacity claims at face value though. From what I've seen, it was common for hospitals to report being overwhelmed even during flu seasons pre-covid. I wouldn't classify that level of 'overwhelmed' worthy of mandates upon society. I don't doubt that during these periods of time hospital resources are strained in some way, but there's a difference between this routine level…

Dude go to a hospital in a populated area during this surge. My wife sat in the waiting room for 3 hours with SEVERE abdominal pain, DURING A PREGNANCY and was unable to be seen. We went home. If she’d had an ectopic pregnancy, she would probably not be here anymore.

To be fair I had exactly that same experience at the UCSF Emergency Room in 2017. Four hours in the waiting room, and then the only bed they could give me was against one wall of a busy hallway.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#398

Post by notahacker »

xadhominemx wrote: post #194
walterbell wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These numbers can be further separated by "with Covid" and "from Covid" causality, as well as co-morbidities and expected lifetime. E.g. if someone was soon to die from illness A, but died 3 months earlier from complications induced by Covid, and the hospital received a financial payment for classifying this as Covid-related treatment, that should be broken out into a separate reporting category. Such deaths would no…

Excess mortality is higher than reported COVID deaths. Australia contained the virus in 2020 and saw negative excess mortality. Official COVID deaths understate the true toll.

In places with good nationwide data like the UK and national level lockdowns, the excess mortality spikes also line up very well with the case outbreaks (especially pre vaccination), and considerably less well with other plausible causes of excess mortality (lockdown and unemployment induced stress, [long term effects of] reductions in access to treatment for chronic conditions)

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#399

Post by biomcgary »

rglullis wrote: post #319
tynpeddler wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vaxxed and unvaxxed populations both rely on the same medical infrastructure. So when the unvaxxed fill hospitals to recover or die, they are consuming scarce resources that are required by the population at large for other things like birth, cancer, surgery, etc. Sadly, we don't have an ethical way to let all the unvaxxed get covid without impacting the medical system negatively for the rest of us.

Cigarette use kills 480000 people every year in the US alone. 300 billion dollars estimated to be spent per year with treatment of smoking-related illness. I don't want even to look at the numbers of the more critical epidemic on the US: obesity and metabolic diseases. By arguing that "the unvaxxed" are a burden and that they deserve discrimination, you are opening the gates for those arguing that smokers should be f…

To be consistent, we probably shouldn't be covering people who ride or drive vehicles. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p1007-crash-injuries...

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#400

Post by hbn »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #354
theandrewbailey wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd say the answer to that should be determined by the hospital capacity. If a region has sufficient hospital capacity that it would not be overwhelmed by the increase in COVID cases among the unvaccinated go ahead and lift most restrictions. Having anyone's freedoms dependent on available hospital capacity is a terrible way to run a society. Note that these freedoms were debated and won in an era where medicine wa…

Are you opposed to laws mandating seatbelts or criminalizing heroine?

Yes to both of those things. The government shouldn't get to take money from me because I endangered myself.
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