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Comment by ralfn | Hacker News Reader

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/covid-coronavirus-vaccin...

For example. Not intended to be exhaustive.

It's still is an important insight though. The vaccines do not lead to herd immunity.

There isn't a viable herd immunity strategy yet, which implies very young, very old and immuno compromised individuals are still at risk.

It also means 'encouraging' people to take the vaccine won't help, except to keep those people out of the ICU, and if that's the intent it seems more 'freedomy' to me to just not treat unvaccinated covid patients when it peaks.

Because herd immunity is the argument used to defend mandatory vaccinations, and it appears to be a false argument.

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“… it seems more 'freedomy' to me to just not treat unvaccinated covid patients when it peaks.”

What an abhorrent statement. Your definition of freedom is surely different than mine.

Then i'm curious what your definition would be?

Because when you run out of ICU space, there is triage. There was triage last week. There is triage next week.

Who gets care first?

My point is that many people who are unvaccinated would prefer this, than to be forced to be vaccinated. (and they are effectively forced now in many places)

There were two arguments used to justify this imposition:

(a) - the herd immunity helps protect those can't protect themselves (too young, too old, immuno compromised)

(b) - it overwelms the health care infrastructure making it so that in certain places people can't get emergency care because the ICU's are full

Now the first argument (a) seems to be not true, and the second argument (b) seems to me like 'personal responsibility'. If you want to freedom to make these decisions for yourself (such as to get vaccinated), you are only accountable for the consequences of that for yourself.

The idea that you demand to not be vaccinated, but still get first-come-first-served emergency medical care at the expense of others, sounds to me entitled, spoiled and selfish.

So, if it turned out that the vaccine caused side effects that resulted in large cases in the ICU or cancer incidents down the road, you are willing to put them at the end of the line since they decided to take the vaccine? Do you not see how many variations of this argument can be made and how nonsensical the results would be?

City dwellers have increased incidence of cancer or whatever other ailment, so their choice to live in cities precludes them from medical services. Marijuana smokers have higher incidences of x so they don’t get treatment. Motorcycle, bicycle, and scooter drivers are risky actors so their choices preclude them from care. Where does it end?

Doesn’t seem like freedom to me.

>Where does it end?

When there are enough ICU nurses available to meet the demand.

>Doesn’t seem like freedom to me.

Again, can you give me a definition. It sounds like something 'empty' an American would say. Do you mean, Liberty? Like from the French Revolution?

This discussion doesn't matter in the US anyway, because you already have economic triage, where there is just no hospital near poor people. So in the US, the poor people are just 'free to die'.

When we need to triage it absolutely makes sense to take into account how much the ailment depended on the patient's known-to-be-risky choices. Motorcyclists and drug users, sure.

Since the major vaccines have minimal known side effects, we should not now or later blame people for taking them.

Due to EMTALA, hospitals are legally required to treat unstable patients regardless of vaccination status.

It plots rate per 100k population at the time of July when fully vaccinated rate is very less. Atleast the plot should be rate per 100k vaccinated and rate per 100k unvaccinated.

Oh good call!

I can't edit my comment any more (or else i would have added this).

It seems nobody even bothered to count and plot the thing that would actually inform us properly.

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