Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 437 posts

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#321

Post by roenxi »

acdha wrote: post #318
roenxi wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ..."

Where your comment went wrong was in conflating rational decisions made at the time the rules are made or enforced with routine rational choices made constantly by the population. It’s much easier to have a rule which says “always wash your hands when preparing food” than to have every single restaurant worker have to reason about the level of risk posed by what they’ve done since the last time they washed their hand…

Libertarianism doesn't rely on all people making individually good choices. It relys on power being extremely spread out so the blast radius of bad choices is contained and the law of averages comes into play because the median person makes ok to good decisions.

And people keep proposing systems that do worse than that and refusing to critically assess how their ideas work out in practice vs a free market.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#322

Post by croon »

roenxi wrote: post #317
croon wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're quoting something from May last year, before there was vaccine, where he was expressing a general disclaimer about the (very) small potentional for enhanced pathogenesis when creating vaccines. This is not the case with the covid-19 vaccines. So yes, regarding covid, more protection is always better than less. The rest of my points were also specifically about covid, as is apparent if you were to quote its ent…

It could still happen. There are going to be more waves of coronavirus that are better adjusted to work around the current crop of vaccines. Nobody has a crystal ball for this stuff. That is why the scientific bodies keep talking about "evidence" and "no evidence" instead of making blanket claims. Plus if I recall correctly there is some evidence that people who get COVID after being vaccinated (ie, breakthrough case…

> Plus if I recall correctly there is some evidence that people who get COVID after being vaccinated (ie, breakthrough cases) get worse cases.

Please find the source, otherwise I assume this is from misinformation around Israel statistics, which doesn't say that at all.

> Yes to the diesel.

"The excess emissions of harmful nitrogen oxide (NOx) exhaust gases can be linked to 38,000 premature deaths worldwide, according to the new research." [0]

[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2131067-diesel-fumes-le...

> But I'll point out that coronavirus is quite different to nerve gas - you're going to be exposed to it anyway regardless of vaccination rate.

[citation needed]

> And statistically speaking, the person who exposes you is likely to be vaccinated.

Misleading. Please tell me adjusted to group size which group (vaccinated/unvaccinated) is more likely to expose me.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#323

Post by acdha »

herbst wrote: post #284
enkid wrote: 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.

By now, the COVID vaccines have been given to an extremely large sample size so even very rare side-effects would be known by now.

Similarly, because vaccines train your own immune system without staying in your body, it’s extremely unlikely for a side-effect to be delayed in time for more than weeks. Note the timeframes on the relevant historical examples:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history....

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#324

Post by jaybrendansmith »

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…

For the same reason that, in a completely libertarian society, people will not buy police insurance and fire insurance and thus provide financial support for a police force and fire company. It's too idealistic and shows the limits of the invisible hand. Governments specialize in risk externalities and black swan events, and COVID-19 falls under both of these scenarios. What's clear from all this is that pandemics and wars show the weakness in the Libertarian philosophy and yes, giving government this kind of power is both dangerous and necessary. "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." - Federalist 51, Alexander Hamilton.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#326

Post by roenxi »

croon wrote: post #322
roenxi wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could still happen. There are going to be more waves of coronavirus that are better adjusted to work around the current crop of vaccines. Nobody has a crystal ball for this stuff. That is why the scientific bodies keep talking about "evidence" and "no evidence" instead of making blanket claims. Plus if I recall correctly there is some evidence that people who get COVID after being vaccinated (ie, breakthrough case…

> Plus if I recall correctly there is some evidence that people who get COVID after being vaccinated (ie, breakthrough cases) get worse cases. Please find the source, otherwise I assume this is from misinformation around Israel statistics, which doesn't say that at all. > Yes to the diesel. "The excess emissions of harmful nitrogen oxide (NOx) exhaust gases can be linked to 38,000 premature deaths worldwide, accordin…

> Please find the source

On reflection, it didn't make any sense. Obviously the worst case scenario for covid is death and so it isn't possible for a vaccine to make breakthrough cases worse.

Regardless, you're still wrong. It isn't the case that more protection is always better. We know that there are circumstances where a vaccine can make a disease worse. And we don't know what future variants of the coronavirus will do.

On the diesel; yeah, it causes deaths from air pollution. Lots of things do. Life is not without risk.

> [citation needed] ... Misleading.

I mean; it is kinda obvious that COVID isn't going away. And you can tell from the case numbers that it is mostly vaccinated people getting it, because there aren't enough deaths for it to be raging through an unvaccinated population [0].

It isn't misleading, it is just facts.

[0] EDIT - Eg, New York is at around 33 deaths v. 4,400 cases in the last 7 days. CFR of 0.7%, let alone IFR. Compared to a batting average of around 55k / 2 million cases overall which is >2%. Suggests around 66% of cases are among vaccinated people minimum, maybe higher.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#327

Post by acdha »

roenxi wrote: post #321
acdha wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where your comment went wrong was in conflating rational decisions made at the time the rules are made or enforced with routine rational choices made constantly by the population. It’s much easier to have a rule which says “always wash your hands when preparing food” than to have every single restaurant worker have to reason about the level of risk posed by what they’ve done since the last time they washed their hand…

Libertarianism doesn't rely on all people making individually good choices. It relys on power being extremely spread out so the blast radius of bad choices is contained and the law of averages comes into play because the median person makes ok to good decisions. And people keep proposing systems that do worse than that and refusing to critically assess how their ideas work out in practice vs a free market.

Note the rest of the sentence where I specified to be a desirable place to live. Outliers matter: if you live on a block with 10 houses, you care more about the one which is falling apart and full of rats than the ones which are mostly okay.

> And people keep proposing systems that do worse than that and refusing to critically assess how their ideas work out in practice vs a free market.

Can you provide examples of the baseline you’re using to say that other systems do worse? Successful implementations, not idealized imaginings.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#328

Post by croon »

roenxi wrote: post #326
croon wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus if I recall correctly there is some evidence that people who get COVID after being vaccinated (ie, breakthrough cases) get worse cases. Please find the source, otherwise I assume this is from misinformation around Israel statistics, which doesn't say that at all. > Yes to the diesel. "The excess emissions of harmful nitrogen oxide (NOx) exhaust gases can be linked to 38,000 premature deaths worldwide, accordin…

> Please find the source On reflection, it didn't make any sense. Obviously the worst case scenario for covid is death and so it isn't possible for a vaccine to make breakthrough cases worse. Regardless, you're still wrong. It isn't the case that more protection is always better. We know that there are circumstances where a vaccine can make a disease worse. And we don't know what future variants of the coronavirus wi…

> Regardless, you're still wrong. It isn't the case that more protection is always better. We know that there are circumstances where a vaccine can make a disease worse. And we don't know what future variants of the coronavirus will do.

I'm still wrong because I point out based on facts that I'm correct? The covid vaccines are much better than no vaccines.

I'll throw in another point:

"For every 10 million people who receive the first dose of AstraZeneca, about 66 more will suffer from a blood-clotting syndrome than during normal circumstances, according to the study published in the British Medical Journal. This figure compares with 12,614 more incidences recorded in 10 million people who have tested positive for Covid-19." [0]

> On the diesel; yeah, it causes deaths from air pollution. Lots of things do. Life is not without risk.

Is your freedom not impeding on other peoples freedoms (to live)?

> I mean; it is kinda obvious that COVID isn't going away. And you can tell from the case numbers that it is mostly vaccinated people getting it, because there aren't enough deaths for it to be raging through an unvaccinated population.

> It isn't misleading, it is just facts.

"Prevalence in those aged 5-49 was 2.5 times higher at 0.20% (0.16%, 0.26%) compared with those aged 50 years and above at 0.08% (0.06%, 0.11%)." [1]

It would've been nicer with more exact data, but older were vaccinated earlier, and ages 5-12 have 0 vaccinations yet.

Your "facts" seem based on simple reasoning that I can't reconcile with what I consider facts to be, nor do I agree with the reasoning to begin with.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-26/blood-clo...

[1] https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/89629

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#329

Post by quotemstr »

zhdc1 wrote: post #305
donutdan4114 wrote: post #127

Gosh, disturbing comment section for disturbing times. When experimental medical treatments become mandatory for illnesses that have a 99%+ survival rate, and there is absolutely NO LONG TERM safety data, some red flags should be raised. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jktvh6k0qys

> Gosh, disturbing comment section for disturbing times. When experimental medical treatments become mandatory for illnesses that have a 99%+ survival rate, and there is absolutely NO LONG TERM safety data, some red flags should be raised. The current case fatality rate is averaging around 2%, but that's with access to medical care. The CFR at the early stages of the pandemic, and in countries without good medical sy…

> The current case fatality rate is averaging around 2%, but that's with access to medical care.

This is an order of magnitude off from what the data actually say.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

See table 4.

Delta: total cases: 92,029 Deaths within 28 days: 117

100 * (117 / 92,029) = 0.127%

No, not anywhere close to 2%. 5%? 10%? It never got anywhere near that.

This disease just isn't that deadly and we need to recognize that.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#330

Post by quotemstr »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #144
donutdan4114 wrote: post #127

Gosh, disturbing comment section for disturbing times. When experimental medical treatments become mandatory for illnesses that have a 99%+ survival rate, and there is absolutely NO LONG TERM safety data, some red flags should be raised. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jktvh6k0qys

What about the long term safety data on catching / surviving COVID itself? Long COVID seems to affect between 10-30% of people who catch COVID. Why do I never hear anti-vaxxers being concerned about that?

I put long COVID in the same bucket at long Lyme, which doesn't actually exist. It's a pretext for hypochondria, not a legitimate basis for public policy.
Post reply on HN