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Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

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Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#61

Post by retrac »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #9

When I was growing up, they counted anyone who got vaccinated against something as a "success." So if 80 percent got vaccinated for X, they bragged about that. These days, we count anyone who didn't get vaccinated as a failure and bellyache about that 20 percent that "won't cooperate" and malign them as problem children who don't have a good reason for their choices. It's a dramatic change in attitude and it's very s…

It's a bit strange here in Canada. 92% of the population in my province has had at least one COVID shot. And disproportionately many who haven't, are children. And we can probably exclude a couple percent of people who are genuinely medically advised against getting it, and the hyper-needle-phobic. So we're talking... about 1 - 4% of the adult population maybe, who could realistically be called antivaxer? They are irrelevant socially, politically, epidemiologically. But at least with the slice of media I consume, everyone seems quite concerned about them.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#62

Post by nwiswell »

TrevorJ wrote: post #51
nwiswell wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically every nation already uses force to deter certain forms of socially problematic behavior. If you habitually litter, for example, you'll receive a fine. If you don't pay that fine, you're going to end up with a bench warrant. There is an implicit threat of force. Same for graffiti, smoking in public places, etc. Vaccine uptake is not actually compulsory under threat of force, and in that sense I have trouble…

"Do this or you will be unemployable" doesn't sound like force to you?

> doesn't sound like force to you?

Not by the state, no. And withholding a job offer is certainly not force. We generally accept that there are a lot of things that will make you unemployable, like having a swastika on your forehead. It's up to the business owner / recruiter / whatever to determine what the reasonable rejection criteria are. If there's a reason someone can't get vaccinated, like an allergy, I'd consider it a moral obligation for the prospective employer to take that into account.

FWIW (anecdata): my (large) company never mandated vaccines at any point, and neither did any of the companies where my friends work. And I'm in California, so I doubt there was really any place in the US where it made you truly unemployable (with the possible exception of frontline healthcare workers), even if some people were "forced" to change jobs.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#63

Post by TrevorJ »

jeffbee wrote: post #54
mike_hearn wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few argued that, but it's what happened. Recall that COVID unvaccinated non-citizens still may not enter the USA for any reason.

False. Children, people traveling for emergencies, and anyone medically unable to take the vaccine may travel to the U.S. without it.

It sounds good, but I can tell you from experience that getting the exception on medical grounds is quite difficult, even with pretty incontrovertible reasons. Doctors were very much pressured to not put their career on the line and would rather sweep you under the rug.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#64

Post by throwthroyaboat »

christkv wrote: post #48
chrsig wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get that the hospitals were being overrun by people dying of covid, right? It was to the point where emergency care wasn't available because hospitals were full. I doubt your claim, but even then, there are plenty of other reasons why having such a high unvaccinated population is a problem.

I’m vaxed by the way and yes I’m aware of the problems but you are not addressing what I said at all. The unvaxed person was or vaxed person spread and is spreading the virus at the same rate. The irrationality of treating unvaxed people now differently from vaxed persons is absurd. I’m more worried about the serious mental health issues people obsessed with the virus are having. I keep seeing people on the street wi…

> I keep seeing people on the street with n95 mask walking alone

Those people might be sick (either with covid/the flu/cold etc) and using the mask as a signal to others "please don't come near me I'm sick".

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#65

Post by slater »

DeetrixDotter wrote: post #31
thot_experiment wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but like, we don't let the unlicensed drive cars either because that is you know, dangerous to other humans. Some of the reactions you're describing are extreme for sure, but the fundamental idea of refusing rights to people who don't care about the safety of others is sound and important to a working society.

There's a big difference, legally and morally, between not granting a positive right (eg. a licence to drive cars) and violently denying negative rights (eg. meeting with family, being in public, peacefully seeking basic needs, speech). Acquiring a licence does not require an experimental gene therapy with alarming or unknown side effects. As the dust is settling and more is becoming known, will apologies be forthcom…

> As the dust is settling and more is becoming known, will apologies be forthcoming?

I don't think the "i read something on facebook, vaccines=bad!! also, furthermore..." folks are the type that would offer apologies, I'm afraid.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#66

Post by hotpotamus »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #9

When I was growing up, they counted anyone who got vaccinated against something as a "success." So if 80 percent got vaccinated for X, they bragged about that. These days, we count anyone who didn't get vaccinated as a failure and bellyache about that 20 percent that "won't cooperate" and malign them as problem children who don't have a good reason for their choices. It's a dramatic change in attitude and it's very s…

When I was growing up, you had to get your vaccines to go to school or join the military or participate in many aspects of society and anti-vaxers were seen as a fringe minority.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#68

Post by [deleted] »

luckylion wrote: post #58
throwaway22032 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not understanding my point. Shouting people down, restricting their movements, trying to put them out of a job etc. is abusive behaviour. It works if the force is sufficient enough. That doesn't make it right.

Sure, and I wasn't a fan of the approaches they used, but I do understand them. The alternative is either to accept their willful ignorance that will have life-threatening impact on third parties that weren't willfully ignorant, or to cut them off from societal institutions for anything that follows from their decisions. At least in Germany, that was the debate, and the folks who didn't want to get vaccinated didn't…

[deleted]

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#69

Post by hotpotamus »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #32

What surprised me the most was just how vicious and cruel the people in my life could be towards the unvaccinated. It went beyond mere schadenfreude. Many of my otherwise tolerant and empathetic friends eagerly ate up any and all news about anti-vaxxers suffering or even outright dying. I don't know how much of this was a result of them getting caught up in the social media bandwagon (Twitter, r/HermanCainAward) or b…

No post body was provided.

Re: Discriminatory attitudes against the unvaccinated during a global pandemic

#70

Post by mindslight »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #24
epgui wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm deadly allergic to eggs, and the only flu vaccine easily available to me is made with eggs, so I don't take it. There are many other medically valid reasons to not take a vaccine. There are even some (a very small number) of people whose religious convictions are a valid reason to get an exemption. The issue is that the overwhelming majority (>99%) of people who choose not to vaccinate, do so for bad reasons, whi…

The issue is that the overwhelming majority (>99%) of people who choose not to vaccinate, do so for bad reasons, which amounts to making an uninformed medical decision, and one that adversely impacts other people in addition to themselves. These people are what the controversy is actually about. I really don't think that's what is going on. I used to be on an antivax list (for unrelated reasons -- I am not an antivax…

Yes, it's important to not deprecate individuals' personal informed good faith opinions in favor of the top-down overprescriptive medical system. But this concern doesn't apply to the main contingent of unvaccinated, either.

The sheer majority of the vaccine hesitant have had their head pumped full of nonsense by the anti-American narratives of Fox News and its ilk, then validated by Facebook. The common refrain isn't one of not being able to get vaccinated for any specific medical concern. Rather in the best case it falls back to ambiguous FUD, and often involves group identity and not giving in to those other people.

And yes, it sucks that the legitimately unvaccinated can get lumped in with those adding to a public health problem as some misguided political statement. As a libertarian, I'm personally quite frustrated at the damage they've done to the general concept of freedom. But that's all the more reason to call it out for the anti-rationality that it is, rather than letting them continue to burn goodwill towards legitimate good faith points by hiding behind them in bad faith.

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