Covid safetyism has gone mad | Hacker News Reader

Covid safetyism has gone mad

unherd.com

14 pointsmrfusion8 comments

One simple thought experiment shifted my views a bit: if a new virus had been discovered in late 2019 that had the lethality (around 0.005% ?) it does in the fully vaccinated, how would we have reacted? As far as I can tell, it would have passed without comment. So now that we're actually in that circumstance in wealthy countries with high vaccination rates, why are we acting so differently now?

In many areas, the vaccination rate is low. Also, Covid has many sub-lethal effects that make life unpleasant, to say the least. And many people, due to age or other conditions, are especially vulnerable. In Alabama, there have been more Covid deaths than births. Is this the way you want to control the population?

I live in a neighbourhood with a 92% vaccination rate according to my municipal government, and yet vaccinated people are still acting like it's the plague here.

It may well be a side effect, or perhaps the cause, of how well we handled it here. (About 2.5% of people in Ontario, Canada had antibodies from exposure as of a blood sample survey in early 2021, a number which probably isn't much higher now.) With most still having not been exposed or knowing someone immediately close to them who has caught it, then the notion of contracting is of course, more than a little unsettling, even if you know it'll probably be harmless since you are vaccinated. Creates a sort of indefinite duration emergency though, since vaccines seem to be insufficient to fully suppress it even with a really high vaccination rate.

> In Alabama, there have been more Covid deaths than births.

All sources I have seen report that Alabama had more total deaths than births in 2020, i.e., population went down. (This is the normal state of affairs in many countries, even without covid) E.g., nytimes (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/18/world/covid-alabama-death...) says 58k births, 65k deaths of which 7k due to covid.

Do you have different information?

What does Alabama have to do with California and New York covid restrictions on their vaccinated residents?

The point is, everyone who wants to mitigate this risk already has done so by getting a vax. People who have done so have very little risk. It doesn't matter what others do in a statistically significant way, so why try to coerce them? It's counterproductive.

> it is not the law that precautions must be taken against every peril that can be foreseen by the timorous

Great quote

I've already voiced my opinion on COVID safety previously so I'll only address one point but it's a major one, which is there's a fundamental difference in circumstance between the normal risks one takes or is exposed to in a regulated society and those one experiences in a disease pandemic.

In a regulated working society one has grown up learning to live with a range of known risks one is likely to experience such as it's safer to use a pedestrian crossing with lights than to risk running a busy road - and one uses one's own autonomy to keep safe and out of trouble in this environment. That's how life is normally barring any force majeure/acts of God or some totally unexpected wayout/rare catastrophe occurring. Even then, you still have your autonomy to sum the situation up and then try to make the most of your terrible predicament.

The difference with a pandemic is that when others act irresponsibility, don't wear masks, ignore vaccination drives etc., they take away your autonomy to act in the best way you think fit for your own safety. (Why? Because the intrinsic nature of a pandemic is to spread invisibility from person to person and the only effective means of control is for everyone to act in a coordinated way to break the cycle - that's not just my opinion, it's the best advice from multiple experts.)

Violators who don't conform to the rules reduce your ability to act to the lowest common denominator - to the level of their bad behavior whether you like it or not. They are endangering you, your life and or your family's life in ways that you have no control over and they have no right to do that.

Even if the risk is minimal then these rules violators still have no right frighten those who don't share their view and who continue to think the risk is sufficiently high to continue protecting themselves against the disease. (Compare this to a person walking down a busy street brandishing an AK47 - right, you'd have him lock up ASAP. In effect, that's what's happening when people don't play by sensible rules.)

And that's the way it ought to be until the medical officials or the best scientific advice available according to society's rules (i.e.: not from some untried science) gives the all clear. At that point, society has no further obligation to continue to honor the wishes of any who still remain worried.

That's the way it's been in past pandemics going back to the Plague/Black Death and earlier and I'd suggest that's also the way it'll be in the future irrespective of loud vocal complaints from those who value their safety less than the majority do.

When you take away people's autonomy to act in what they believe is in their own best interests and safety or you trample over their rights with impunity then you are acting like the stormtroopers of the 1930s. Either anarchy has broken out or authoritarian rule has taken over completely. There are no ifs and buts about it, democracy's failed.

Unfortunately, there has been too much air time given to stories like this where those involved are sounding off and doing so without sufficient forthought or are doing so for shellfish/self-centered motives.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com