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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

#291

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…

...that is why I could never be a libertarian. People have repeatedly proved themselves unwilling or unable to live up to the libertarian ideal of behaving "rationally."

There's nothing inherently inconsistent between right-libertarian values and a vaccine mandate.

Libertarians believe that force should be applied to person A to protect person B from person A in certain circumstances.

If person A wants to punch person B in the face, restricting person A by force is perfectly consistent with libertarian values.

If person A threatens to infect person B with a deadly disease due to refusing a vaccine, then a vaccine mandate has some justification under the same ideals. The devil will be in the details (e.g., how deadly is the disease, etc).

It's also why a carbon tax and many other measures are not inherently inconsistent with libertarian values on a first principles examination.

But for some reason, libertarians in practice tend to dislike these policy proposals, even though they can follow in principle from the founding axioms. I attribute that to group-think and a general disbelief in the existence of negative externalities, not to a problem inherent in libertarianism.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#292
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Or does it just tell the story of a time without easily accessible open media?

Fair, although I could look at that open media as propaganda/brainwashing and reach a conclusion on media's effectiveness.

I can also look at the past and ask if vaccines eradicated the diseases it was meant for... and for that it was incredibly effective.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#293

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…

...that is why I could never be a libertarian. People have repeatedly proved themselves unwilling or unable to live up to the libertarian ideal of behaving "rationally."

Behaving rationally isn't a particularly libertarian ideal. All political ideologies aspire to behave rationally.

Nobody stands up and starts with "Lets approach this irrationally and ..."

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#294
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your vaccine does not work unless someone or everyone else has one? Has this been observed with previous vaccine products?

Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_infection#By_dise... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity Do not think in terms of "your vaccine," because vaccines are about preventing the spread of a disease within a population.

Yes but here immunity is impossible :-/

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It says they had their trust badly abused by the sort of people who push for universal vaccination, and learned from it.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the vaccinated population that breeds vaccine-resistant variants. Just like it's the antibiotic half-course that breeds antibiotic resistant bacteria. As the vaccines are failing harder and harder, convenient to blame those that weighted long term risk over short term protection.

No, the unvaccinated population, where the virus keeps being replicated, breeds variants of all kinds; the vaccinated population applies selection pressure that favors vaccine resistance. If the entire population is vaccinated variants would not emerge at all because the virus would not spread from person to person (and would eventually disappear from the population).

My understanding is that the delta variant originated in India. I’m not convinced that achieving a 100% vaccination rate in the US would accomplish anything.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#297
post #284
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no evidence of that with this vaccine, and with the number of people who have received it we would have collected that evidence by now, so stop spreading hypotheticals.

This is not something you usually notice until years into using it. Even the heart inflammation thing did not show in studies and only months after vaxing, and instead of more severe immune responses on infection this is something that happens immediately and not years later. This is all just loud thinking at this point. But it's something you regularly find new studies too because it seems to be a concern.

The reason the heart inflammation think didn't show up is because of how rare it is, not the amount of time passed. If the issue you are talking about is that rare, than my argument still stands.

As to something appearing years later, that seems extremely rare and could happen without getting the vaccine, just being exposed again to the virus. Oh, and neither of us are the people that should be evaluating that because we aren't medical researchers who have closely studied the incidents of vaccines causing reactions years later. I will trust the people who have extensively studied the problem.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#298
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or does it just tell the story of a time without easily accessible open media?

Fair, although I could look at that open media as propaganda/brainwashing and reach a conclusion on media's effectiveness. I can also look at the past and ask if vaccines eradicated the diseases it was meant for... and for that it was incredibly effective.

But is that even true? Have you seen this graphic for example https://postimg.cc/CBJQF4dZ

Edit:// I don't know how truthful it is. But vaccines seem not always the resolving factor. Source of the image: https://learntherisk.org/vaccines/diseases/

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#299
post #173

A new vaccine. Rushed to market. Pushed upon us before it was even approved. Then rushed to approval. That's strange. I need to get this vaccine, not to protect myself, but to protect you. That's strange. That's 2 strange things in a row. When you see 2 strange things in a row like that, it smells fishy.

> I need to get this vaccine, not to protect myself, but to protect you. > That's strange. Can you elaborate? Not sure I get it.

How does my vaccination safe you (given you'd be my neighbor)? I mean it is still quite possible that I get infected by the CoV and that would mean that I'd transmit it, even though I might not have / have mild symptoms.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#300

Isn't this an unnecessary medical procedure for people who have already recovered?

CDC says vaccines are still better: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/12157/ This paper says natural immunity better: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v... Unfortunately the science is evolving so fast and the variants are coming so fast, it's impossible to keep up!

The headline of that CDC article is misleading: the actual study compares the protection given by being previously infected with that given by being previously infected and then also vaccinated. There's no comparison against people who're relying only on vaccination to protect them. This is also a pretty weak justification, since if I remember rightly there's a comparable improvement by using one of the more effective vaccines rather than one of the less effective ones or possibly by increasing the number of shots required for a complete course of vaccination - but there's a huge taboo about noticing the difference in effectiveness between vaccines. (Also, I think this mandate kind of incentivises people to get the least effective of the US-approved vaccines, since it's a single shot and that makes it quicker and easier to meet the requirement.)
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