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Comment by mrfusion | Hacker News Reader

Why is no one talking about the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights, a nonbinding Declaration signed by the US and every other UNESCO nation?

Article 6 – Consent

1. Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be express and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice.

Article 11 – Nondiscrimination and nonstigmatization No individual or group should be discriminated against or stigmatized on any grounds, in violation of human dignity, human rights and fundamental freedom

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Every Ebola carrier has the right to spread Ebola through the population. The Ebola carrier should not be discriminated against by forcing the Ebola carrier to isolate, and prevent him/her from killing the entire village or planet.

Public health supercedes individual rights. It has been like this since we started forming large groups of civilizations. If you don't like this, you should leave civilization.

There's a difference between forcing someone who has a disease to isolate, and forcing someone who's not vaccinated against a disease to isolate.

You can obtain a medical exemption if necessary or just refuse to attend school or work for the employer that is requiring the vaccine. You can be homeschooled/attend online college or find an employer that lets you work from home. No one is being forced against their will to receive the vaccine, there is always another option.

Nobody should be forced to get the vaccine. But nobody has a right to every private space, nor to spread a disease without liability or repercussion. I’m increasingly of the mind that if you choose to not vaccinate, fine, whatever. We have a right to be stupid because it isn’t always clear ex ante what is stupid and what is brilliant. If you’re voluntarily unvaccinated and you get sick, you’re on the hook for the cost. Of your own treatment as well as anyone it can be proved you infected.

Also, all these mandates have medical exemptions. They should also permit equal access with a mask and recent negative COVID test. (I do not think we should subsidise those tests out of the insurance pool or public purse.)

There was a paper circulating on HN not to long ago about the potential for a vaccine to cause a virus to mutate and become more dangerous for those who are unvaccinated. Would you be ok with charging vaccinated people who get others sick as well? Remember, the vaccine doesn't always stop transmission.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28101752

I agree I think smokers, drinkers, drug-takers should also fall under this. If they choose not to take advice about reducing smoking, drinking, taking drugs then they should be on the hook for medical treatment.

> smokers, drinkers, drug-takers should also fall under this

Those are chronic behaviours. There is evidence that quitting addictions is medically challenging. There is no similar barrier to vaccination for most people. (For those for whom there is, we have medical exemptions. Including for extreme cases of anxiety.)

This is for private business mandates - from the article:

    The move may encourage some unvaccinated Americans to get the shots as well as give more private businesses across the nation greater confidence to implement vaccine mandates.

People have been clamoring for government mandates as well. I think this will clear the wat for military and state workers mandates even if CNBC doesn't explicitly say so in this article.

I would be happy with just refusing admittance to hospitals of non vaccinated people without medical exemptions.

Yes, hippocratic oath be damned.

> hippocratic oath be damned

Triage doesn’t violate the Hippocratic oath. Allocating limited medical resources is sometimes a necessity.

That said, yes, they shouldn’t be refused. We don’t refuse the mentally ill or others who self harm. But unless it can be shown to be a product of mental illness, the voluntarily unvaccinated should be on the hook for the cost of their treatment.

Why should vaccinated people be denied healthcare resources because the resources are being exhausted by people choosing to ignore medical professionals advice and refuse to get a free vaccine?

> Why should vaccinated people be denied healthcare resources because they are overloaded by people choosing to ignore medical professionals advice and refuse to get a free vaccine?

If hospitals are full the voluntarily unvaccinated should be de-prioritised. (If they recover, they’re going to be right back in with the next variant.) But if the hospitals aren’t full, there is no reason to refuse care.

At the rate with which hospitalizations are occurring, and volatility of the situation, the only viable strategy is to simply turn many of them away and leave a lot of hospital capacity for slack.

Hospitals cannot roll the gurneys out into the street and dump non vaccinated people when they need to make room. Once admitted, they can occupy lots of resources for lots of days, so I say just make it easy and tell them to hit the road for the time being.

I do not even see a reason why elective procedures should be affected by the selfishness of non vaccinated people.

and smokers, drinkers, drug takers, extreme sports enthusiasts.

Sure, if those actions were causing hospitals to run out of capacity.

In 2019/20 there were estimated to be 506,100 hospital admissions attributable to smoking. (Statistics on Smoking, England 2020-NHS)

And? The rate of admissions is the important part. Considering there was no testimonials by nurses and doctors about exhausting ICU capacities and whatnot, or at least I did not hear about it, I do not see why that is relevant.

I hope you mean when hospitals are at capacity and not before.

I would be OK with prioritizing those who were proactively vaccinated if we get there. Latest data shows 8-9% of hospital beds are occupied by those with Covid, including those with a positive test but no symptoms

https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/covid19/report-patient-impact.html

From what I understand, hospitals in certain areas are running out of capacity as that graph indicates with certain states quite a bit more purple than others. But I would put unvaccinated people at the back of the line, even behind elective procedures and hope hospital management does whatever it takes to make sure others are prioritized.

What other vaccines does the military currently require?

Adenovirus, Influenza (Flu Shot), Measles, Meningococcal, Mumps, Polio, Rubella, Tetanus-diphtheria, Yellow Fever, Hepatitis A, JE Vaccine, Typhoid, Cholera, Hepatitis B, Measles, Mumps, Plague, Rabies, Varicella, Small Pox, Anthrax

https://usarmybasic.com/about-the-army/army-shots

Nobody is being forced to get a vaccine. If you don't want it, you are free to avoid it. You are free to change jobs. You are free to go to a different restaurant. You are free to go to a different concert.

As for stigma, I have no problem stigmatizing people for their choices when those choices are harmful to others. I feel comfortable stigmatizing neo-Nazis.

You're right, we should be talking about it. There are good arguments for why a COVID-19 vaccine mandate would not violate these commitments: for one thing in the United States, we have a de facto vaccine mandate for all kids attending public schools. The justification is that not being vaccinated harms other people, and we can require it under the principle that "your right to swing your arms ends where the other man's nose begins". This seems perfectly reasonable to me.

But, the key thing is to acknowledge the ethical commitments you've made, and explain your actions. Positions can change, but I would not want my leadership to simply ignore them because they are momentarily inconvenient. If they set that precedent, what's to stop them from ignoring other commitments — binding or otherwise — to defending our allies, protecting our environment, or upholding basic principles of justice?

Probably because appealing to the authority of a nonbinding resolution isn't a very strong argument.

Because the covid vaccine is not the first vaccine to be mandated.

It is the first one whose global mandate is sought in order to live a normal life.

Did you attend elementary school in the US?

To attend kindergarten in California, you need to be vaccinated for polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatisis B, chickenpox.

To attend 7th grade in California, you need to be vaccinated again for tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis and chickenpox.

Did you attend college in the US?

Many states (not California) require you to be vaccinated against meningitis before attending freshman year.

The specific requirements depend on where you live and attend school [1].

The "normal lives" that we have been able to lead (pre-covid) are in part because of these requirements -- we don't have outbreaks of 50,000 polio cases a year like we did in 1952.

[1] https://www.immunize.org/laws/

Is that true? If you were known to carry any of known deadly viruses throughout history which had known vaccines would you be able to live a "normal" life amongst others in society?

>nonbinding Declaration

That's why.

"Mandates" in the headline refers to mandates imposed by businesses and schools, many of which already require vaccines. Why would this particular vaccine would be any different?

You're right, it's very sad we've come to this state of affairs. Shame also that the defenders are rushing to justify the coming vaccine passports:

"These are private businesses!"

"You can just stay home/quit your job/order groceries online/do curbside pickup/etc"

"We need to focus on SAFETY".

Interesting that the "my body, my choice" crowd has gotten super quiet on this particular issue.

> Interesting that the "my body, my choice" crowd has gotten super quiet on this particular issue.

Not really interesting, since abortion does not affect others whereas a transmissible virus does.

> abortion does not affect others

This is a bad faith argument that makes no effort to understand anti-abortion viewpoints. At least for some subset of their population, the whole basis for their stance is that they assign humanity at conception, not at birth. Hence to say abortion "does not affect others" is an opinion only valid in some viewpoints.

(unfortunately, I feel disclaimers are necessary around topics that people tend to not be objective and unemotional about) - I'm not anti-abortion myself; if anything I'm quite pro-abortion and think it should be encouraged in many cases. However I still try to understand the viewpoint of anti-abortion proponents

I am aware of the viewpoints of anti abortion choice people, but they are not relevant to forgingahead’s comment that I was replying to.

forgingahead’s comment implied that people with the opinion of pro abortion choice are being inconsistent in their belief if “my body, my choice” when it comes to mandating vaccines, to which I intended to clarify how it is not inconsistent because it is actually “my body, my choice [assuming it does not affect others]”.

Do you believe that society should be unable to impose medical requirements on individuals, or that this case doesn’t warrant it?

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