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Comment by omginternets | Hacker News Reader

This reasoning completely ignores the reality that COVID does not pose a significant risk to most people. Why not vaccinate those who are at risk, on a voluntary basis?

To reiterate: I am not opposed to vaccines, but concerned about the general push towards mandatory vaccination for everyone.

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Hospital Capacity.

I live in North Texas, our Trauma Service region has 4m people in it, at one point during the Delta wave we had less than 70 free ICU beds - and we have more hospital capacity than much (if not all) of the state per capita (and indeed, much of the country as well). During the Delta wave, the hospitals here were full of unvaccinated 20 and 30 somethings without complicating health issues, with serious COVID, most of which would have been prevented had they been vaccinated.

Unless the social contract is changed so those who are unvaccinated can be denied treatment (meaning limited to palliative care) during periods of capacity required rationing for serious (read, requires an ICU bed) cases of COVID, mandatory vaccinations are effectively a requirement.

Is it fair to the person who was vaccinated, then gets in a car accident (or has a stroke, or some other issue) and dies waiting for an ICU bed, because all the beds are full of folks who could have been vaccinated (and probably wouldn't have needed an ICU bed if they had) but decided not to be?

I'm pretty libertarian, and I loathe making these choices - but as long as hospital capacity is a shared resource, your choice as an individual effects others, and in times of crisis society sometimes has a right to decide some things for you, whether you like it or not, remove that linkage, and then folks should be able to do as they please.

I think the better solution is allowing denial of treatment over mandatory COVID vaccinations.

"Mandatory COVID vaccinations" has other aspects to it. Who makes it mandatory? Employers who may have a reason beyond public health for mandating, namely that they don't want a bunch of employees falling seriously ill at roughly the same time.

Touche.

*I think the better solution is allowing denial of treatment over government mandated COVID vaccinations.

>I think the better solution is allowing denial of treatment over government mandated COVID vaccinations.

I hope you are being sarcastic, that is a horrible policy because it can easily lead to: *I think it is better to allow denial of treatment to drug addicts because they knew what they were signing up for when they started using.

or worse.

There is no mandatory denial of treatment.

Those that want to treat drug addicts are still allowed and free to do so.

Edit: Just like those that want to treat unvaccinated COVID patients are still allowed and free to do so. And if they want to charge more money (due to shortage of supply or high demand) so be it.

That argument is a very slippery slope. There are a lot of other health issues which stem from either active at-risk behavior or lifestyle choices.

I don't believe medical ethics should be reformed in a way to open such a door. It might be Pandora's.

It is frustrating that anti-mandate crowd ignores this comment, in my mind this is the singular reason that strict measures should still be required.

A functioning health care system is a cornerstone of any modern society. Until we get to a point where subsequent covid waves aren't overloading the healthcare system, then we need to keep fighting this thing.

> During the Delta wave, the hospitals here were full of unvaccinated 20 and 30 somethings without complicating health issues, with serious COVID, most of which would have been prevented had they been vaccinated

Source?

https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/new-surge-of-covid-patient...

https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/covid-19/assets/modeling.pdf

See the graphs on Slide 11.

Thank you!

I've seen the current state analysis before, but imo, it's hard to tell how many unvaccinated 20-30 year olds (with/without comorbidities) were affected (slide 11 combines ages 18-49).

The article mentions that "it’s now commonplace for previously healthy, younger adults with decades of life expectancy on the line to be among the sickest of the sick" but shows no data.

I've seen it enough from enough from enough different diverse sources for it to count as something resembling data - the thing is, the two crunch periods for COVID, are the times the data gets the blurriest, because the people who collect it are so busy.

I'd also be much more sympathetic to vaccine evangelism if the damn things got nationalized/opensourced at some point and didn't translate to pure pharma profit.

> COVID does not pose a significant risk to most people.

True, but this is not the deciding factor. What matters is the ability of the healthcare system to take care of the sick during outbreaks.

If it doesn’t make sense from a public health or human behaviour standpoint, what other factors should we consider before financial motives?

The only people who say this are those who don't consider long covid. Which is a terrible outcome and seems to indiscriminately chose who to effect (in the pool of non-hospitalized people) and not be rare at all (10-30%).

It's misleading to transfix on the died:"recovered" dichotomy. Recovered just means "not dead, not testing positive".

And there is a good chance that this virus is sowing the seeds of a massive wave of Parkinson's in the future. There is good evidence of some forms of Parkinsons having viral origin. COVID has mirrored most of the traits these suspect viruses have (gut, vagus nerve, lewy bodies)

>not be rare at all (10-30%)

>this virus is sowing the seeds of a massive wave of Parkinson's in the future

Do you have a source for any of this? On the face of it, this is outrageous fear-mongering.

Sure

Long haul prevalence:

https://health.ucdavis.edu/health-news/newsroom/studies-show...

For Parkinson's just google "Parkinson's viral etiology" There are dozens of legitimate published studies. None focus specifically on COVID, because its so new and the timeframes so long. But there is a link between infection with serious viruses (including coronaviruses) and later neural degeneration.

>None focus specifically on COVID

All I needed to know. Thank you for editing your previous comment. Even so, saying there is a "good chance" is still a massive over-statement of what is currently known.

The study on "long-haul" prevalence did not paint the same picture of a terrifying "Long Covid". The reported symptoms seemed quite mild - "fatigue and shortness of breath". Thanks to a combination of increased unhealthiness thanks to lockdowns, and the now endless cycles of diseases being passed around, that sound like my every day life. The published evidence around "Long Covid" certainly does not match the popular and widely-circulated (generally online) stories and dire admonitions.

The Parkinsons link with COVID isn't far fetched

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201106/covid-19-linked-to-...

Also fatigue and shortness of breath are about as "mild" as chronic back pain, i.e. you don't want it. It really isn't something people should dismiss in the same way you shouldn't dismiss moving a piano by yourself. You'll likely be fine, but if you tweak your back you'll live with a constant reminder that you should not have done that.

It's been a year since that article, so I assume the "mounting evidence" didn't come to much.

On the other hand, recent reports show some much more disturbing possible side effects:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/10/01/restless-an...

One rationale I've seen is that uncontrolled spread and too many unvaccinated people overwhelms the hospital system, thus causing dramatic harm to people who need non-COVID related treatments. This dynamic played out in the US just a few weeks ago. That last wave had a larger proportion of hospitalized people who were younger and, in theory, less at risk because that group was less vaccinated as a whole.

The vaccines do reduce spread some, but they also keep people out of the hospitals.

Your reasoning also completely ignores the reality that the vaccines do not pose _any_ risk to most people.

> general push towards mandatory vaccination for everyone.

So you don't have your measles etc childhood vaccines?

Long Covid is a gamble.

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