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Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

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Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#241

Post by adriancr »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #230
not2b wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's only been hard to get 2/3 of Americans to go along quite recently. Everyone lined up for vaccines in the 1950s and 1960s, numbers well over 90%.

Consider that in 1955 one of the companies producing the Salk Vaccine shipped 120,000 doses with live virus which sickened 40,000 children and sparked a polio epidemic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories#Cutter_inc...

And yet numbers were still 90%+, so what does that say about their views on vaccine usefulness?

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#242

Post by roenxi »

michaelt wrote: post #40

As a part-time libertarian, one of the frustrating parts of the pandemic has been discovering how many people need the nanny state to step to stop them punching themselves in the face. Near the start of the pandemic, I thought the most intrusive state powers would barely be needed. Why would you ever need to make a vaccine mandatory? What rational person would refuse a lifesaving medicine offered to them for free? We…

(1) It is population level rational to have diversity. Sometimes acting irrationally has payoffs because something wildly unexpected happens.

(2) There is an almost endless list of things people do that are to their detriment. A core part of libertarianism is that people have to be free to make their own mistakes. We don't mandate exercise, prudent spending, safe sex practices or sensible family planning. The reasons to mandate vaccination are not robust enough to justify mandating that either.

Although I think it is humourous that the "my body my choice" slogan is being studiously avoided by both wings of politics at the moment.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#243

Post by croon »

nradov wrote: post #220
lamontcg wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence does he have of actual transmission? I want to see actual studies with humans with breakthrough infections giving infections to other humans. I'd like to see one contact tracing case where a breakthrough infection was the index patient that spread it to multiple people at a given venue. I've already posted studies which contradicts the idea that breakthrough infections are equivalent to unvaccinated inf…

This is not an argument by authority. There is strong evidence of significant Delta variant transmission by vaccinated people. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02187-1 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/effective... https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.31.21261387

The point is; Is it more (/less/no change) transmittive vaccinated vs unvaccinated? If it lowers transmittion only a tiny bit it's still net positive.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#244

Post by pell »

angelzen wrote: post #136
tzs wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a society in which if you do something stupid that causes massive but not immediately fatal injuries to yourself you will be taken to an emergency room and likely given expensive treatment even if you do not have adequate insurance or enough money of your own to pay for that treatment, thereby passing the cost on to the rest of us in terms of either higher medical costs or higher taxes, it is a lot harder for it t…

See e.g. obesity crisis. Or medicalized end-of-life costs. Sadly, we pay for expensive stuff people do to their health all the time.

Obesity is in itself a sickness in many cases. I think the implication that people "do it to themselves" really ignores the large pile of evidence that shows that it's really difficult to treat it effectively. Similarly other examples such as alcoholism or other substance addiction suffer from the same issue.

When it comes to vaccine hesitation I am not sure where to draw the line. It's a very emotional topic apparently and it seems rational arguments only go so far.

That said, I think if a society only treats those medical emergencies deemed to have a "non-egoistical" cause Pandora's box will come to haunt us sooner or later. We should save humans whenever we can. That's just the cost of doing business so to speak.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#245

Post by bserge »

michaelt wrote: post #40

As a part-time libertarian, one of the frustrating parts of the pandemic has been discovering how many people need the nanny state to step to stop them punching themselves in the face. Near the start of the pandemic, I thought the most intrusive state powers would barely be needed. Why would you ever need to make a vaccine mandatory? What rational person would refuse a lifesaving medicine offered to them for free? We…

Why not let them? A lot of things can only be learned through hardship.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#246

Post by tbrownaw »

thrill wrote: post #76
swayvil wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad. I prefer to have a choice. The, "Trust the authority. It's for your own good." argument does not sway me.

You do have a choice. Take the vaccine if you want to work in the federal government or find another job. The government doesn't owe you or anyone else a job.

A Hobson's choice is probably not what someone wanting a choice has in mind.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#247

Post by voiper1 »

pwinnski wrote: post #156
cbdumas wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> covid vaccines do not prevent infection This is untrue, see this site and the studies in the footnotes: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/delta-var... TL;DR: Vaccines are effective, though not perfect, at preventing infection with the delta variant

TL;DR: You are correct! The counter-story seems to be based on radically misreading data out of Israel, which seems to show higher infection rates among the vaccinated, a reading which fails to take into account the incredibly high rate of vaccination there. So yeah, there are more infections among the 78% vaccinated than among the 22% unvaccinated. Given that there are 3.5x as many people in the first group, that's…

Israel is showing per-capita rates by default.. in some of the data... on https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/ to avoid this issue:

e.g. hospitalized above age 60 (חולים קשה - התחסנות)

162/100,000 unvaccinated

40/100,000 2 dose (I think)

5/100,000 2 dose + booster

If you'd just look at the raw numbers, the vaccine doesn't appear so helpful: 226 unvaccinated, 116 with 2 doses, 55 with 3 doses. Looks like it barely helps.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#248

Post by KingOfCoders »

kxyvr wrote: post #233
version_five wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a libertarian and I think choices should be up to the individual, because it's never ok to have a political group decide for you what is good or bad. It's antithetical to western liberalism. My rant aside, I think there are better and worse ways to infringe on people's liberty when needed. And given the way the winds are blowing, it would be much better to enforce vaccination at the federal level, i.e. compel peo…

I think part of the difficulty with the libertarian point of view regarding the COVID vaccine is that not all parties are given a free choice either. For example, if someone refuses a vaccine, should an emergency room be free to refuse care? Currently, they can not due to EMTALA. That's not to say that it's unreasonable to question and philosophize the implications of a mandate. At the same time, barring a more effec…

"For example, if someone refuses a vaccine, should an emergency room be free to refuse care?"

No we shouldn't, we don't turn people away who drove drunken with 200km/h and crashed.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#249

Post by tbrownaw »

setum wrote: post #143
angelzen wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are vaccines. Everyone that wants a vaccine already got it or can easily get it. People say they are extremely good at eliminate severe covid, that's what I got one myself. But at this point taking a vaccine or not is a personal decision. People are punching themselves in the face all the time, see obesity crisis for example. Should we ban hamburgers & fries next?

yes, if obesity were contagious.

From https://www.nature.com/articles/srep37961 :

> In a social network, many phenomena have been found to spread interpersonally, such as biological games4, indirect reciprocity5, misinformation or rumors6,7, and infectious diseases8,9. Obesity is one of them10 and is often seen as a contagious epidemic1

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#250

Post by MisterBastahrd »

giantg2 wrote: post #5
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #2

The article doesn't say whether there's a medical exception. Not everyone can get the vaccine; having that cost your job is both heartless and (probably) illegal.

And let's not forget that people with natural antibodies are being fired from their private sector jobs too. We seem to be focused on measuring output rather than outcomes. Other countries are giving recovered people the same status as the vaccinated since they have the antibodies. But I guess that makes too much sense...

Natural antibodies are fun until you've waited a year and now you don't have them anymore.
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