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Comment by AboveTheGame | Hacker News Reader

Why do you think that other people are endangering you in particular by not taking a vaccine? That’s a -personal- not a -public- health issue. Insofar as you aren’t barred from taking the vaccine you also aren’t barred from drinking all day and eating pizza for every meal. You’re not endangering my heart because YOU eat more and your logic is piss poor.

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The logic is pretty clear to me.

- Unvaccinated people transmit the virus at a higher rate.

- Transmission leads to more illness.

- More illness leads to overcrowded hospitals and worse outcomes for everyone needing care.

Therefore a “personal choice” can lead to public concerns, making this a public health issue, and actually same could be said for your argument about overeating. Heart disease is a major public health concern, which is why some jurisdictions banned sugary drinks in children’s school lunches.

"Therefore a “personal choice” can lead to public concerns, making this a public health issue, and actually same could be said for your argument about overeating."

When using n-order impacts to determine when personal choices become public concerns, it's just a matter of determining where one draws the line. This will undoubtedly lead to differences in opinion on where that line should lie.

For example, even two people who are in support of universal mandatory vaccination many differ on the level of force the government should use gain compliance.

Yea I agree it’s something we can and should debate via legislation. However there is another part to that spectrum: laws prohibiting institutions from mandating vaccinations.

Anecdata warning: Over half of my wife’s healthcare colleagues refuse to get vaccinated. These are people who regularly treat the extremely frail and immunocompromised.

Perhaps one of the oddest things I saw was that hospital that fired a nurse who had antibodies but refused to be vaccinated. It's the same outcome (immunity) but I guess the corporate lawyers didn't care. Like, all I want to see is a little common sense from both sides (although it seems like there is some degree of bias).

I could see that going both ways. We’re only now starting to see reliable studies about the duration of immunity after infection, so mandating a vaccine for a healthcare worker isn’t out of the realm of reasonable precaution. It would really depend on how recently the antibody test was conducted.

There is no scientific evidence that vaccination produces more durable immunity than infection. In fact it appears to be the opposite.

https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

And there's more to immunity than antibodies.

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavi...

It should be added that not only appears to be the opposite, the message was that vaccination is still necessary. That cannot be justified with a precautionary reasoning, it was misinformation.

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