I'm not sure where in the world you are, but this feels like a post that's fallen through a timewarp from two years ago. Certainly where I live no-one is under house arrest for not being vaccinated, there are no mask mandates and barely anyone even talks about the vaccine(s) anymore.
General / Off-Topic The Covid vaccine must be mandatory ?
- Thread starter Patrick_68000
- Start date
- Status
In the UK Covid is so last year
Had my first bout of Covid-19 only a month ago. 40C fever for a couple of days, aches a bit longer, sore throat and cough for a week. No long term symptoms. Could have been worse--I've been vaccinated three times, but not since last November--could probably have been better. It's definitely still circulating, though no one got it from me, fortunately.
Anyway, my stance on vaccination hasn't changed. Those who aren't getting vaccinated without a credible medical excuse are idiots whose willful ignorance is a threat to others. However, I'm also a near absolutist when it comes to bodily autonomy, so I could never condone forcibly vaccinating them, nor punishing most people for refusing a vaccine in and of itself (only for the consequences of doing so).
I think the most reasonable reconciliation of these positions is simply to treat infectious disease as the hazard it is. There are already laws in most jurisdictions that make it illegal to host gatherings in unsafe environments, at least without getting explicit and informed consent from all of those involved. Same goes for employment. If a workplace refuses to mandate all reasonable precautions against the transmission of a potentially dangerous pathogen, then workers should be able to opt out of showing up, without their pay or continued employment being at risk. Any way you cut it, exposure to communicable disease is a far more unreasonable requirement than vaccination. At the individual level, knowingly or recklessly exposing others to potentially dangerous pathogens is assault, and should be treated as such. Depending on the outcome of that exposure and the circumstances involved, it could also be battery, or manslaughter. By and large, there doesn't need to be any special vaccination requirement to encourage vaccination.
Of course, there are some exceptions, some venues, where mandating a vaccine is the only rational option, and not at all out of line with other requirements of their positions. Examples of this would be anyone who as a condition of their employment or duties must be in close proximity to others, especially the more vulnerable, or where one must be able to be relied upon to perform tasks that illness would preclude. Emergency services (paramedics and police), medical workers, professional caretakers, anyone preparing or serving food or drinks for sale to the public, and military personnel should all be required to be vaccinated against all relevant pathogens, or risk being canned.
Such requirements were largely uncontroversial before SARS-CoV-2 made headlines. For example, in 2019, there were up to sixteen required vaccinations for military personnel, depending on where one was stationed. Vaccines have been mandatory in the US military since the Revolutionary War. Today, in some AORs, COVID-19 vaccination is the only one on the schedule that's only 'recommended', not 'required', for some personnel, despite being objectively more of a threat to readiness than other some other pathogens with required vaccinations. This is for entirely political, rather than medical, reasons. Somehow, being a moron became a mainstream virtue and what facts one accepted as real came down to what talking heads they were rooting for.
Anyway, my stance on vaccination hasn't changed. Those who aren't getting vaccinated without a credible medical excuse are idiots whose willful ignorance is a threat to others. However, I'm also a near absolutist when it comes to bodily autonomy, so I could never condone forcibly vaccinating them, nor punishing most people for refusing a vaccine in and of itself (only for the consequences of doing so).
I think the most reasonable reconciliation of these positions is simply to treat infectious disease as the hazard it is. There are already laws in most jurisdictions that make it illegal to host gatherings in unsafe environments, at least without getting explicit and informed consent from all of those involved. Same goes for employment. If a workplace refuses to mandate all reasonable precautions against the transmission of a potentially dangerous pathogen, then workers should be able to opt out of showing up, without their pay or continued employment being at risk. Any way you cut it, exposure to communicable disease is a far more unreasonable requirement than vaccination. At the individual level, knowingly or recklessly exposing others to potentially dangerous pathogens is assault, and should be treated as such. Depending on the outcome of that exposure and the circumstances involved, it could also be battery, or manslaughter. By and large, there doesn't need to be any special vaccination requirement to encourage vaccination.
Of course, there are some exceptions, some venues, where mandating a vaccine is the only rational option, and not at all out of line with other requirements of their positions. Examples of this would be anyone who as a condition of their employment or duties must be in close proximity to others, especially the more vulnerable, or where one must be able to be relied upon to perform tasks that illness would preclude. Emergency services (paramedics and police), medical workers, professional caretakers, anyone preparing or serving food or drinks for sale to the public, and military personnel should all be required to be vaccinated against all relevant pathogens, or risk being canned.
Such requirements were largely uncontroversial before SARS-CoV-2 made headlines. For example, in 2019, there were up to sixteen required vaccinations for military personnel, depending on where one was stationed. Vaccines have been mandatory in the US military since the Revolutionary War. Today, in some AORs, COVID-19 vaccination is the only one on the schedule that's only 'recommended', not 'required', for some personnel, despite being objectively more of a threat to readiness than other some other pathogens with required vaccinations. This is for entirely political, rather than medical, reasons. Somehow, being a moron became a mainstream virtue and what facts one accepted as real came down to what talking heads they were rooting for.
The effectiveness of the COVID vaccine was 36%
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7142a4.htm
Making an ineffective treatment mandatory for all members of a population is malpractice.
We are only beginning to understand the negative impacts of the draconian lockdowns, maskings, and forced vaccinations on the general public.
Excess deaths certainly spiked during the pandemic among people that did not contract COVID.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00469580221139016
The education consequences of the hyperactive response were certainly horrible
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED614031
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1351347
The big difference in the mandatory vaccination schedule in US schools and the mandatory COVID vaccination is the actual depth of research and level of efficacy between the COVID RNA vaccine the regular required weakened virus / bacterial antigen vaccine regimen: Diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP), poliovirus (IPV), Measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella. The non-COVID measures are extremely effective.
Anyone that suggests that the COVID vaccine was equivalent to the other mandatory vaccines is simply disingenuous.
As a high school teacher I was required to receive the COVID vaccine - or I would have been terminated (after 35 years of employment despite tenure protection). I was double vaccinated and boosted.
I did not contract COVID, but I now suffer myocarditis.
There is no question that the government response resulted in the quashing of free speech, the infiltration of government influence into social media companies (in the US), and the employment of disgust/cleanliness psychological tools to attack, financially punish, and deperson dissenters. There are other historical examples of this technique with far darker consequences. The damage done to the confidence in health science will last for generations.
On a side note, there is now a troubling social contagion on the rise: school avoidance syndrome.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK534195/
I have more students than ever with 15+absences /semester. This was not the norm prior to the pandemic lockdowns.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7142a4.htm
Making an ineffective treatment mandatory for all members of a population is malpractice.
We are only beginning to understand the negative impacts of the draconian lockdowns, maskings, and forced vaccinations on the general public.
Excess deaths certainly spiked during the pandemic among people that did not contract COVID.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00469580221139016
The education consequences of the hyperactive response were certainly horrible
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED614031
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1351347
The big difference in the mandatory vaccination schedule in US schools and the mandatory COVID vaccination is the actual depth of research and level of efficacy between the COVID RNA vaccine the regular required weakened virus / bacterial antigen vaccine regimen: Diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP), poliovirus (IPV), Measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella. The non-COVID measures are extremely effective.
Anyone that suggests that the COVID vaccine was equivalent to the other mandatory vaccines is simply disingenuous.
As a high school teacher I was required to receive the COVID vaccine - or I would have been terminated (after 35 years of employment despite tenure protection). I was double vaccinated and boosted.
I did not contract COVID, but I now suffer myocarditis.
There is no question that the government response resulted in the quashing of free speech, the infiltration of government influence into social media companies (in the US), and the employment of disgust/cleanliness psychological tools to attack, financially punish, and deperson dissenters. There are other historical examples of this technique with far darker consequences. The damage done to the confidence in health science will last for generations.
On a side note, there is now a troubling social contagion on the rise: school avoidance syndrome.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK534195/
I have more students than ever with 15+absences /semester. This was not the norm prior to the pandemic lockdowns.
Lacking a lot of critical context with that statement that makes it completely misleading.
That report specifically addresses outdated monovalient vaccines against the Omicron variants in moderate to severely immunocompromised patients and the need for more data about these groups. Effectiveness at preventing hospitalization for non-immunocompromised patients was, and is, dramatically higher.
COVID Data Tracker
CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.
covid.cdc.gov
Vaccines aren't treatments and they aren't ineffective. Even if the 36% figure (which is only applicable to very specific circumstances) you quoted had any bearing on the broader population, a 36% reduction in rates of hospitalization vs. the minuscule risks of of the vaccinations themselves, would still make it a huge success, given how poor the prognosis is for those hospitalized among those groups.
No, asserting that the contents of that CDC report is in anyway implying that vaccination against COVID-19 is generally ineffective is disingenuous.
Influenza vaccines are frequently mandatory while generally having lower effectiveness rates than SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and COVID-19 generally being more dangerous than the flu.
You are arguing that influenza vaccines are less effective than COVID vaccines, so we should take the COVID RNA vaccines? Does not sound like a positive argument for either.
Influenza vaccinations are not required legally in the US.
It is tough to drill down beyond the meta-analyses and look at the source studies, but when you do, the discussions revolve around the enhancement of the reduction of symptoms with subsequent booster applications. Some are stated in terms of antibody titers, others in terms of symptom severity or excess deaths, and some in terms of actual detectable viral RNA.
You also find that a large proportion of infections are asymptomatic and are undetected or underreported. Of those that are symptomatic - and are PCR confirmed, the vaccines do moderate the severity of symptoms.
Since COVID PCR testing of the population at large does not occur anywhere, claims made about overall percent effectiveness are overstated. There is clearly unintended systematic bias in the claims of effectiveness which focus on symptomatic cases.
However, the complete language shift from protection to moderation midstream in the mRNA vaccine crusade certainly eroded public confidence in the health bureaucracy political class. Here in the US we had politicians saying things like "this is a pandemic among the unvaccinated" which is demonstrably false.
Let's be clear, I 100% support the normal schedule of vaccinations that prevent infection and have established records of effectiveness in that role. All of my children received the full schedule of those traditional vaccinations.
As far as COVID RNA vaccinations are concerned, I am still skeptical and concerned about their effectiveness and safety.
On a side note - I am also not a fan of influenza vaccines. I need to research more about them. It seems like influenza high mutation rates mean that they are likely always going to be with us. Are the vaccines selected to weed out the strains that cause the most severe symptoms, or simply the ones that the models suggest will be the most likely to be common this season? If it was the former, I'd be more inclined to take an influenza vaccine, if it is the later, I'd rely on natural acquired immunity to give better protection if I encounter the virus. I need to learn more about the viral vaccine selection process.
Well yes, that's exactly how they work, there's a yearly vaccine because the influenza virus mutates so rapidly that the old vaccine is no longer effective against the mutated strains, so each year a new vaccine is distributed that's specifically designed to protect against the most severe strains of the mutated virus. Note this can only be made to protect against known strains so there may be some severe strains that get missed due to arising late in the season, and mild strains aren't targeted due to the low morbidity rate of these strains. You can't acquire immunity against a strain of influenza until you have it, then it will only protect you against that particular strain, you are still susceptible to all the others, mild or serious.
Note that the infuenza vaccine isn't meant to stop all influenza, but to reduce the impact of serious strains so as not to place to much of a load on medical facilities so they aren't overloaded and can't handle other emergent dangers.
I am unvaccinated...never had Covid. And to be honest i am glad I am unvaccinated after all.
I mean...if wearing mask and getting vaccinated is for others, than I am all good.
Imagine.. People getting vaxxed only to safe me from Covid but not themself. Lol I may be dumb, but I prefer logics.
Yes, it's totally worth not giving in to societies pressure.
Usally it takes years of testing to approve a vaccination.
Also funny how the vaccine narrative changed from "Vaccinaion safes from covid, no side effects" to "Vaccination can cause serious side effects".
Yes I know "No one" ever said this. But the truth is that's was exactly what has been said.
But hey... All this happened in the name of the religion called science.
I mean...if wearing mask and getting vaccinated is for others, than I am all good.
Imagine.. People getting vaxxed only to safe me from Covid but not themself. Lol I may be dumb, but I prefer logics.
Yes, it's totally worth not giving in to societies pressure.
Usally it takes years of testing to approve a vaccination.
Also funny how the vaccine narrative changed from "Vaccinaion safes from covid, no side effects" to "Vaccination can cause serious side effects".
Yes I know "No one" ever said this. But the truth is that's was exactly what has been said.
But hey... All this happened in the name of the religion called science.
Last edited:
No, I'm pointing out that the COVID-19 vaccines are comparable to some mandatory vaccines.
No vaccines are legally required in the US for the general populace; quite a few people have none without either they or their parents having done anything illegal. Several vaccines are mandatory for child care, preschool, and K-12...but that doesn't make it illegal to not be vaccinated, it makes it illegal to attend if one is not vaccinated without an exemption. Likewise, if you want to serve in the military, or work in child or healthcare, you generally need up to date influenza vaccinations.
They aren't overstated, they are listed by outcome.
Since COVID PCR testing of the population at large does not occur anywhere, no health authority claims to have accurate figures on how effective they are at preventing asymptomatic infection. That is why the list of outcomes in that CDC data tracker doesn't have such a category, the most mild outcome anyone can do a quality study on is preventing symptomatic infection.
That's a problem for epidemiologists, statisticians, and historians. It's barely relevant to the question of whether one should get vaccinated or not, and barely consequential any arguments relating to mandates.
The language politicians used and how they were represented, or misrepresented, in the media has nothing to do with the vaccinations themselves.
These vaccinations can prevent infection, but that's not remotely the only measure of effectiveness, just the one outcome that's hardest to ascertain.
The idea that protection is worthless if it isn't absolute is purely arbitrary and largely nonsensical. You've never taken a vaccine that was always 100% effective at preventing infection, because no such vaccine has ever existed. You're still better off vaccinated than not, even if you get infected, because the degree of immunity you've acquired from the vaccination will still reduce the severity of the illness.
Skepticism that is unwarranted at this point and not a useful basis for an argument against mandatory vaccinations. There odds of any of these approved vaccines proving to cause more harm than they prevent is about as close to zero as anything gets. So, the safest arguments against mandatory vaccination should assume that vaccines are 100% effective at achieving the most desirable outcome (no infection) and have zero negative side effects (which are, of course, both impossible for any vaccine to ever achieve). Only then can the real meat of the issue be reached.
That's because, I would surmise, your friends are not largely folks with various clinical vulnerabilities who were last able to go outside when we had solid mask mandates and the like helping keep infections to a safe level. Once they rocketed up into double digits and remained there, basically everyone who doesn't have options available due to being immunocompromised, having various conditions long covid massively exacerbates to severely disabling or life threatening degrees, etc. has effectiovely been unable to safely leave the house as a result of the lifting of even the most basic unintrusive precautions.
At this point all the data's in, every potential rare side effect of the vaccine is orders of magnitude more common and more acute in people who develop the same outcomes from having the disease. Choosing not to get vaccinated is therefore gambling that chance against the odds that you will NEVER get the disease.
Actually, the ONS survey involved testing the population irrespective of symptoms, in order to obtain a more accurate estimate of prevalence than simply testing symptomatic cases produces, however that was recently shut down.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey, UK - Office for National Statistics
Percentage of people testing positive for coronavirus (COVID-19) in private residential households in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, including regional and age breakdowns. This survey is being delivered in partnership with University of Oxford, University of Manchester, UK Health...
www.ons.gov.uk
That the right one?
Yet I have personally suffered as a secondary effect of the COVID vaccine. Platitudes of global safety certainly don't carry much weight with me.
Of all governmental intrusions, compelled injection is one I certainly would prefer not to have on my list of independent freedoms to give up.
As you have pointed out, mandatory vaccinations for the regular schedule of diseases were not met (and not by myself either) with significant resistance. Failing to recognize that the developmental process, safety protocols, long term effects evaluations, and consequences for not being vaccinated with the COVID RNA product were worlds apart from the other vaccines. Faith and trust in the health science establishment was effectively broken by statements like "I am science.".
It truly is impossible to have a purely scientific debate on this specific COVID vaccination issue given the manner in which governments leveraged the event to restrict freedoms, assault free speech, and financially disadvantage dissenters (including credible scientists). All of the pain and suffering caused by these excessive interventions for a disease with a mortality slightly higher than influenza (1.1% in the US including the most vulnerable populations in the %, and including those suffering with significant comorbidities), and even lower in many populations than influenza, poisoned the well on mandated COVID vaccinations.
Maybe 10 years from now we'll have a better understanding of the implications of this technology, and the withdrawal of Health Bureaucrat dictators will we see a restoration of faith in health scientists, and the pharmaceutical companies. Until then, it may be reasonable to recognize that hundreds of millions of people are more distrustful than ever of governments and scientists. Calling them morons will pretty much guarantee less compliance with the most basic health recommendations.
This is good news - if you could point me to a research article that discusses the selection process, I'd be very grateful. It would be nice to put my mind at ease on this concern.
Even if your myocarditis is a side-effect of your vaccination, what does that change? There is always some risk, and the risk for those without clear contraindications is many orders of magnitude
Global safety isn't a platitude, and isn't the point. On a purely personal level, the prudent course of action was for you to get vaccinated, irrespective of how unfortunate the ultimate outcome happened to be. Getting vaccinated again may still be the prudent course of action, even if you've suffered a serious negative reaction in the past. That's something for you and your doctor to decide. Any mandates would clearly have to weigh the effects on overall public health, which is unequivocally best served by having as many people as thoroughly vaccinated as possible.
I haven't once advocated for compelled injections. However, I don't need to doubt the demonstrable fact that these vaccines are broadly safe and effective to believe that people are entitled to refuse them.
The problem with these anti-scientific arguments, which are rooted in ignorance, paranoia, and partisanship, is that they cannot hold up to actual scrutiny. The cries of antivaxxers have drowned out actual proponents of individual liberty. When their idiocy is dismissed out of hand, as it should be, many of rights will go with it.
Routine vaccination was widely accepted long before there was any real understanding of the mechanisms behind immunity. We knew more about the biochemistry of these mRNA vaccines ten years ago than we did about any vaccine I was ever given in the 1980s and 90s at the time I was given them...which was decades after many of them were added to the CDC's schedule. It's not an exaggeration to state that we knew more about mRNA vaccines in 2010 than we did about the smallpox vaccine in 2000. That's how fast and how far these fields have advanced.
Now that we have the understanding to engineer vaccines, tailor made for specific pathogens in a safer and more precise manner than ever before, and the ability to do so quickly, so that it can actually be useful in response to an emergency...that's when people start to have doubts? Sounds damned backwards to me.
Even if those allegations were accurate, they would have exactly zero bearing on the scientific merits of COVID vaccines, or any related debate.
Of course we will, but we've long understood the implications of mRNA vaccines.
Those who need to see a track record before accepting a vaccine during an emergency situation are mostly beyond hope. They can't even grasp that the fundamental utility of knowledge extracted via the scientific method is the ability make increasingly accurate predictions.
I'm not compassionate or politically correct enough to coddle a bunch of morons who can be reverse psychologied out of helping themselves by someone pointing out how dumb they actually are. Maybe it would be in my best interest to pander to their inanity, in the hope they become less of a hazard to others, but I don't have the patience for that crap. These are the people who would attack me and mine with their pathogens and imperil my liberties for the sake of their magical thinking and regressive fanboi politics.
I was literally following the work on them when I was at uni in the 2000s. It's just depressing that for all we knew about how sound the science was, it took gestures around us to convince the people holding the purse strings it was worthwhile, once there was a decent sign of an immediate return on investment.
Not to mention - how many routinely used vaccines are attenuated live virus strains?
All the older ones are, most of the ones in use to this day are, but one of the many reasons the mRNA ones are advantageous is because they are protein-only vaccines.
Look at the example I may have given previously in this years long thread, the chickenpox vaccine. That uses an attenuated varicella strain to immunise against the disease. However, one of the downsides is that on very rare occasions, just like the life cycle of the wild strain, it can linger in your system and bounce back as an actual case of shingles in adulthood. It's how the disease evolved in parallel with its host's life cycle, so that the dormant virus reactivates a generation later, when the kids it infected will have children of their own. However, we now have a protein-only vaccine for varicella, which if administered to enough children could prevent any future outbreaks of either disease, all because without a live full viral genome, it is physically impossible to develop a subsequent case of shingles from having had the dormant vaccine reactivate. There's nothing there TO reactivate. There's no gunpowder or gun, only the bullet. Your body studies it and develops a flak vest against it, but can never accidentally have it misfire when it puts it down afterwards.
A lot of the vaccines we use regularly have much higher risks than these novel ones, but we've come to a general medical and societal consensus that they are better than the alternative. They're granbdfathered in, warts and all.
We needed something to protect us from diseases that killed millions, and the minor risks were worth it.
The big difference with these new ones we're coming up with is that we aren't fumbling about to find what works, we're going into it with all the knowledge of the shortcomings and health risks of the limited toolset we had to work with in the early 20th century, as well as everything we've learned since then about how to do it more safely.
Think of it like any other field of engineering. Everything new is built on all the accumulated knowledge that went before, refining it to be safer. When a car company introduces a new model, they don't have to go back to first principles and mathematically prove π r2 in order to invent the concept of the wheel. Televisions at one point could potentially expose you to a potentially dangerous level of radiation. We figured that out, and built cathode ray tubes that couldn't leak that radiation. Then we extrapolated from other principles to create novel kinds of displays, which don't have the components capable of creating it in the first place. This "experimental" technology wasn't us fumbling in the dark, it wasn't more dangerous, it was the culmination of a century of accumulated knowledge in the field.
All the older ones are, most of the ones in use to this day are, but one of the many reasons the mRNA ones are advantageous is because they are protein-only vaccines.
Look at the example I may have given previously in this years long thread, the chickenpox vaccine. That uses an attenuated varicella strain to immunise against the disease. However, one of the downsides is that on very rare occasions, just like the life cycle of the wild strain, it can linger in your system and bounce back as an actual case of shingles in adulthood. It's how the disease evolved in parallel with its host's life cycle, so that the dormant virus reactivates a generation later, when the kids it infected will have children of their own. However, we now have a protein-only vaccine for varicella, which if administered to enough children could prevent any future outbreaks of either disease, all because without a live full viral genome, it is physically impossible to develop a subsequent case of shingles from having had the dormant vaccine reactivate. There's nothing there TO reactivate. There's no gunpowder or gun, only the bullet. Your body studies it and develops a flak vest against it, but can never accidentally have it misfire when it puts it down afterwards.
A lot of the vaccines we use regularly have much higher risks than these novel ones, but we've come to a general medical and societal consensus that they are better than the alternative. They're granbdfathered in, warts and all.
We needed something to protect us from diseases that killed millions, and the minor risks were worth it.
The big difference with these new ones we're coming up with is that we aren't fumbling about to find what works, we're going into it with all the knowledge of the shortcomings and health risks of the limited toolset we had to work with in the early 20th century, as well as everything we've learned since then about how to do it more safely.
Think of it like any other field of engineering. Everything new is built on all the accumulated knowledge that went before, refining it to be safer. When a car company introduces a new model, they don't have to go back to first principles and mathematically prove π r2 in order to invent the concept of the wheel. Televisions at one point could potentially expose you to a potentially dangerous level of radiation. We figured that out, and built cathode ray tubes that couldn't leak that radiation. Then we extrapolated from other principles to create novel kinds of displays, which don't have the components capable of creating it in the first place. This "experimental" technology wasn't us fumbling in the dark, it wasn't more dangerous, it was the culmination of a century of accumulated knowledge in the field.
Last edited:
Even normal and daily medications used by millions of people have higher risk factors than the Covid vaccine. The birth control pill has a higher risk factor than the Covid vaccine, it's also not 100% effective, like the Covid vaccine. The Covid vaccine is however new and developed using techniques not familiar to most people, therefore it is automatically suspicious to a lot of people.
What's normal medication? I doubt there is something like "normal daily medication".
We do have the benefit of evolution tuning our immune systems to cope with infectious pathogens, be they lab created or zoonotic.
No one is coming after you with their filthy dirty germs and unwashed little hands just to get you.
They are more concerned with putting food on the table and having a roof over their heads, and when the shut-down establishment says no - you can't work, you can't meet and support dying loved ones, you can't go to church (but you can riot and loot if the cause is right, or cross borders by the tens of thousands unmasked and unvaccinated, or attend parties unmasked and unvaxxed if you are part of the political class) and you need this jab, they aren't morons, dumb or inane - they have just done the calculus that a leader willing to damage their existence in these ways can't be trusted and should be ignored. This isn't magical thinking or fanboi politics.
There are respirators, gloves, sanitizing ointments and hazmat suits for the health insecure or safety panicked to be protected till the day they die of heart disease of course, so if people are so offended by the unwashed there are protections that are available. People can go wherever they want in their bubble of safety. But that really isn't the issue is it? The issue is controlling the behavior of others to conform to the sensibilities of someone important.
There is simply no way to separate the tangled strands of implemented policies from this one medical treatment. Intolerance and mistrust is the true cancer that COVID caused in our society. It is absolutely not finished doing its damage.
- Status