>yet we force our children to be vaccinated in school in order to be part of society.
Here's what's different: mandating it for everything else. It seems disingenuous to treat the documentation/mandate requirements between countries, public schools, and your local pub as equivalent.
>e also force other things that impinge on personal liberty, such as wearing seatbelts, getting car (and medical) insurance, etc.
"we do it for these other things" is something that sounds like an argument, but actually isn't. Does it make sense for this scenario, with this virus, at this point into the pandemic, and with these tradeoffs? If anything, saying "you've lost liberty elsewhere" is an argument for fighting tooth and nail for the bits that remain.
>the short answer is "it depends on the context".
I think you nailed the crux of the problem and the disconnect between people.
"The context" is wildly different depending on your disposition. For a large swath of the population, the 'context' is that COVID is not an existential threat which warrants the suspension of liberty. For others, the 'context' is that COVID represents such a threat to public health that personal liberty can be traded away.
We're doomed to fight, because each side finds the other reprehensible, and one side is trying to take away the liberty of the other.
>Right now, vaccine holdouts are really screwing things up for us who want to return to some form of normality.
This is categorically false. The unvaxxed aren't the ones preventing you from doing anything. They don't have the power to do so! The government is holding us all hostage and continuously shifting the goal post. Right now, it has been moved to the unvaxxed. Just as before it was about the curve, then controlling case numbers, then acquiring the vax, then reaching minimum vax numbers, now blaming all woes on those unvaxxed. If we look at Australia, maybe we can predict where the post will move next.
>The conversation should be how to draw the right balance, so that, when the emergency is over, we return to some modicum of personal liberty, while still preserving the common good.
For it to actually be a conversation, you have to accept that there are people with a different world view from you, and that they're not wrong, nor an enemy which is holding society hostage. Presumably everyone on this site can read a graph. We looked at the same data and came to different conclusions.
replying to this comment, even though actually applies to multiple replies to my parent comment.
> This is categorically false. The unvaxxed aren't the ones preventing you from doing anything. They don't have the power to do so!
That itself is categorically false. unvaxxed folks provide a tremendous wealth of externalities, such as undue burden on the healthcare system, behavioral and legal changes that require masking due to lack of critical mass in vaccinations, etc.
But, to get to the crux of your arguments:
you do have the personal liberty to not vaccinate. That is not being taken away from you.
However, you do not have the privilege of making it a protected class (which is really what you are talking about).
If you choose not to be vaccinated, you can:
- home school your children
- self-employ and self-insure
- self-medicate and avoid the healthcare system entirely
etc..
Now, none of this is practical in reality, but never at any point is your choice to remain unvaccinated impinged upon.
You simply don't have as many career or social options as you would like, equivalent to being unvaccinated as a protected class.
And that is a horrendous idea (i.e., being a protected class). You can't have it both way... personal liberty often comes as great personal cost. If you truly walk the walk, then be prepared to pay the cost.
>That itself is categorically false. unvaxxed folks provide a tremendous wealth of externalities, such as undue burden on the healthcare system, behavioral and legal changes that require masking due to lack of critical mass in vaccinations, etc.
Again, it's not the unvaxxed doing that to you. That's who you're currently being told is what's preventing you from returning to normal. And again, the last last 18months have been an ever shifting goal post of "if group X would do then..." or "if we had just done Y then..." and yet here we are. Too bad HN doesn't have RemindMe!, as we could check back in a few months post mandate to see what dastardly group/cause/issue is the problem this time.
Those "tremendous wealth of externalities"? That's called living in a society. There's no getting around it. Lots of negative, bad individual choices/actions have Nth order effects on everyone else. Americans specifically make a lot of very, very bad choices over the course of decades that causes "undue burden on the healthcare system" (pick you fav from the CDC's health report). Just because they're not as visible and 1st order as COVID doesn't mean they're not there and a massive portion of the hospital's load.
>you do have the personal liberty to not vaccinate. That is not being taken away from you.
>never at any point is your choice to remain unvaccinated impinged upon.
Ok. Honestly, I don't know where people come from with this argument. "You don't have to, we'll just remove your ability to work, feed yourself, and pay for housing until you comply." These sorts of things are generally challenged because in practice, it's a de facto mandate/ban/whatever. "You're free to choose size of the whip," where previously there was no beating involved, is not actually that great of a deal.
I don't think we're going to agree here, and that's fine.
There is one interesting outcome of this discussion, though:
Given our discussion, one of us has to bite the bullet on a particular point:
Artifact A:
> Those "tremendous wealth of externalities"? That's called living in a society. There's no getting around it.
Artifact B:
>These sorts of things are generally challenged because in practice, it's a de facto mandate/ban/whatever. "You're free to choose size of the whip,"...
I will bite the bullet, and accept that unvaccinated people are not directly causing me harm (unless, for example, one punches me in the face). I will wave my hands and accept the externalities as simply "living in society", (even though, as societal beings, unvaccinated folks do have a significant detrimental effect...)
Accepting, for the sake of argument, that personal responsibility ends at what the individual does (rather than any 2nd to n-order effects, i.e., "externalities"), then it also means that the argument "in practice, it's a de facto mandate/ban/whatever." doesn't hold, since no one individual is holding a syringe up to you and forcing you to take it.
again, can't have it both ways.
Thus, if we accept that we are societal beings, and externalities matter (e.g., 2nd to n-order effects), then my right to swing my fist ends at your face, and vice versa, directly and to a tolerable n-th degree.
Just as an employer can choose not to hire you for toxic behavior or any numerous reasons (particularly at at-will states), the only thing they cannot use as a factor is anything that makes you a protected class.
You are effectively proposing that the choice to be unvaccinated should be a protected class.
That is what I disagree with. There is no justification to make it a protected class.
Here's what's different: mandating it for everything else. It seems disingenuous to treat the documentation/mandate requirements between countries, public schools, and your local pub as equivalent.
>e also force other things that impinge on personal liberty, such as wearing seatbelts, getting car (and medical) insurance, etc.
"we do it for these other things" is something that sounds like an argument, but actually isn't. Does it make sense for this scenario, with this virus, at this point into the pandemic, and with these tradeoffs? If anything, saying "you've lost liberty elsewhere" is an argument for fighting tooth and nail for the bits that remain.
>the short answer is "it depends on the context".
I think you nailed the crux of the problem and the disconnect between people.
"The context" is wildly different depending on your disposition. For a large swath of the population, the 'context' is that COVID is not an existential threat which warrants the suspension of liberty. For others, the 'context' is that COVID represents such a threat to public health that personal liberty can be traded away.
We're doomed to fight, because each side finds the other reprehensible, and one side is trying to take away the liberty of the other.
>Right now, vaccine holdouts are really screwing things up for us who want to return to some form of normality.
This is categorically false. The unvaxxed aren't the ones preventing you from doing anything. They don't have the power to do so! The government is holding us all hostage and continuously shifting the goal post. Right now, it has been moved to the unvaxxed. Just as before it was about the curve, then controlling case numbers, then acquiring the vax, then reaching minimum vax numbers, now blaming all woes on those unvaxxed. If we look at Australia, maybe we can predict where the post will move next.
>The conversation should be how to draw the right balance, so that, when the emergency is over, we return to some modicum of personal liberty, while still preserving the common good.
For it to actually be a conversation, you have to accept that there are people with a different world view from you, and that they're not wrong, nor an enemy which is holding society hostage. Presumably everyone on this site can read a graph. We looked at the same data and came to different conclusions.