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Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

If 70% want one thing and 30% want another, it doesn't matter who "caused" the division; in a democratic society you should be doing the thing that 70% of the people want.

Except! And this is a big "except": when doing the thing the majority wants would violate the civil rights of the minority. The problem (in the US, at least; I can't speak for Germany) is that the minority is trying to paint vaccination as a civil rights issue, essentially. I can see the argument, but it all feels a bit hypocritical, as I expect most of the minority who are complaining now were vaccinated (by mandate) against other diseases when they entered public school as children (and vaccinate their children by mandate before enrolling them in school). And while there is still some resistance to even that in some quarters, it is nowhere near the size of the resistance toward COVID vaccinations.

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Is agency over ones body not a civil rights issue? I'm fully vaccinated and even boostered, but I'm extremely uncomfortable telling other people that they have to do something to their own body.

And I don't think taking vaccines (usually as a child) by mandate in the past changes the ethics of it.

I think it's fair for there to be consequences to refusing the vaccine. Your work may decide they don't want to expose their staff to an unvaccinated human... so you may lose your job. Government may decide that the risk of sitting inside with someone unvaccinated is too high so you may not be welcome at certain businesses. Maybe you have to wear a mask when others don't.

That doesn't cross a line to me, but saying "you absolutely must take this vaccine or we're going to use the force of government to make you" does.

I feel the same hesitation around bodily autonomy, but there's a VERY important point: the decision impacts more than your own body. It's the same logic we use to outlaw certain substances like heroin or PCP--you have a right to do things with your body up until the point where that decision impacts the health and safety of people around you.

Looking at things through that framework is how we end up with controlled substances, anti-smoking laws, DUI laws, and a whole host of other things.

One's rights in the US usually stop at the point where they impact the ability of people around you to live their life without undue interference.

This is a Trolley Car problem: you're going to kill someone: do you flip the switch to kill the baby, or let the Trolley plow through the crowd of people?

Now you know why Philosophy professors teach this problem in Philosophy 101.

> I'm extremely uncomfortable telling other people that they have to do something to their own body.

I'm extremely uncomfortable with granting a novel coronavirus a gigantic reservoir of freely available incubators to infect and try out new ways to use the human body for its own goals, all the while having a way to largely prevent it. The concept of "individual rights" as you present it here is at odds with best practices learned from epidemiology. Is that in-and-of-itself a troublesome fact? Absolutely.

I am vaxed but… this reminds of the abortion argument. If one is against allowing someone right to bodily autonomy (remain unvaccinated) because then exercising that right could lead to the suffering and/or death of another, then that person ought to also be against abortion, as there should be no right to bodily autonomy in that event either, given that the death of another is guaranteed.

Yet on the left we have many who anti-anti-vax while pro-abortion. I don’t understand the consistency of that position.

maybe try once more, focussing on the differences rather than the similarities between the two scenarios.

What’s your argument for it, if I may ask? I cannot convince myself that abortion is a judicial matter as opposed to a legislative one. If it’s an innate right, there shouldn’t be any issue aborting an 8 month old fetus.

I doubt your sincere participation in the argument unless you attempt to see differences between your scenarios.

In effect, the parent comment is attempting to argue their position through proof by lack of counterexample. Now, whether this is a valid proof construction technique, and hence, whether their stated position is of any meaningful merit besides an exquisite example of doublethink, is left to the interpretation of the reader as an exercise.

> I'm extremely uncomfortable with granting a novel coronavirus a gigantic reservoir of freely available incubators to infect and try out new ways to use the human body for its own goals

Then you should be extremely uncomfortable with vaccine mandates, because this is exactly what mass vaccination is doing. Since none of the vaccines prevent people from getting COVID or passing it on to others, the vaccines are creating an evolutionary environment where there is high selection pressure for the virus to evolve variants that resist the vaccines. Mandating vaccines just makes that worse.

the vast majority of viral replications take place in susceptible infected bodies, i.e. predominantly those of unvaccinated individuals. variants, therefore, mostly arise among unvaccinated. sometimes, by chance, a variant then may emerge that is able to evade some of the vaccine induced immunity. unvaccinated individuals therefore represent a source of escape variants, and therefore jeopardize the success of vaccine campaigns.

> the vast majority of viral replications take place in susceptible infected bodies, i.e. predominantly those of unvaccinated individuals.

I'm not sure this is true, but even if it is, this...

> variants, therefore, mostly arise among unvaccinated.

...does not follow from it. The key thing driving evolution of variants is not number of replications but selective pressure. Selective pressure is much larger in a vaccinated individual than an unvaccinated individual (or at least an unvaccinated individual that has not had COVID and does not have natural immunity).

Selection can drive evolution, and in a vaccinated body there exist other selection pressures than in an unvaccinated body. Variants which may by chance be suited well to strive in a new environment need to arise first. This will happen only when replication occurs. The unvaccinated population is the major breeding ground for variants, not the other way around.

> The concept of "individual rights" as you present it here is at odds with best practices learned from epidemiology.

No, it isn't, because science cannot make value judgments. Epidemiology can tell you things like: if you do A, B will happen; if you do C, D will happen; etc. That's all "best practices" based on epidemiology or any other science can amount to. But no amount of science can tell you whether doing A to make B happen, or doing C to make D happen, is worth the cost of doing those things or the other side effects they will have. Those are value judgments, and value judgments should not be forced on people.

That's why we start with a value judgement that everyone agrees on, instead of leaving it implicit. Consider the following value judgement:

> The evolution of a novel coronavirus that is both highly infectious and deadly must be avoided at all costs.

Barring any reasonable objection to this (of which I can think of none), the ball is in science's court to prescribe a course of action. If that course of action is mandatory vaccination, then so be it.

> Barring any reasonable objection to this (of which I can think of none),

Then you haven't thought very hard. "At all costs" is way, way, way too strong. We already have viruses that are much more infectious and deadly than SARS-CoV-2, for example Ebola, and we have not taken this "at all costs" attitude towards them. We expend some effort towards fighting and containing them, but only in proportion, since there are so many other things we also need to expend effort towards doing.

> the ball is in science's court to prescribe a course of action

No, it isn't. Choosing a course of action requires attaching value to different possible future states of affairs. Science cannot do that. It requires value judgments, and science cannot make value judgments.

To take your example, science can to some extent tell you what will happen if you impose mandatory vaccination or if you don't--although since much of what needs to be predicted involves second, third, fourth, and higher order effects and includes various aspects of human psychology and free choice that are not at all well understood scientifically, science's ability to make accurate predictions about such outcomes is limited. But science cannot tell you which of those two possible states of affairs is to be preferred, all things considered.

> That doesn't cross a line to me, but saying "you absolutely must take this vaccine or we're going to use the force of government to make you" does.

You're absolutely right about that but there is a cost-benefit analysis here. If we don't want the government to be able to track our every move (to make sure that the unvaccinated don't violate the public interest) then it's simpler and probably more democratic to just mandate vaccination.

Should and must are very different things. One implies I get a choice to opt out. One implies some sort of coercion.

I don't buy this phrasing, or the rule. Even if read with best intentions. I can't even imagine how ridiculously bad US would be if it was actually ruled based on what 70% of the population wants.

I am not even joking. I think you may want to rethink your argument.

Yes… Democracy isn’t two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner.

That being said, if you declare any consideration of the actual policies to be off limits for supposedly being subjective, you won’t ever be able to make any decision.

Specifically, in this case, vaccinations are safe & beneficial. And even if governments are subject to elections, and their powers are subject to frustration even by minorities opposing them, reality is not. A principled argument cannot be made in the abstract, leaving the wisdom of vaccinations open. Opponents pretend that it is possible because they do not stand a chance on those merits, and seek to instead shift the debate to “freedom vs. safety” or whatever safe in the knowledge that it is impossible to argue for either of those conflicting values to ever ‘win’.

It's not exactly hypocritical because we know that the Covid vaccines were both rushed and lied about. We still don't have full transparency about them, and the companies that made them are trying to make it as opaque as possible.

What most people expect is a vaccine that works as it was said it would, and isn't in a quagmire of censorship and profiteering. I think those are very real concerns that have not, and will not be addressed - and so, you will never get everyone on board.

4.29 billion people worldwide have received a vaccine

We've done a huge scale test -- it thankfully has worked -- and I'm not sure what evidence you are looking for at this point.

It mostly feels like the unvaccinated at this point are 1) cowards, 2) selfish, or 3) believe in some sort of voodoo. Not sure which is worse honestly.

Because its a bad deal for anyone under 50. The risk potentially greater than reward. Also how many vaccines? Israel is on the 4th shot now. 30% of drugs get recalled due to safety. Natural immunity is the superior immunity anyway.

Yeah, mostly lied about by the anti vax guys.

Did the antivaxxers lie about how the vaccines would make us reach herd immunity and stop transmission? Or that they would end the crisis? Or that there are no risks involved in taking them?

They may have over-exaggerated and come up with bullshit counter-narratives, but they were right about the core of the issue: we can't trust leaders who lie all the time.

> we can't trust leaders who lie all the time

This is applicable to every issue we face as a society, but most people ignore most major issues most of the time. There's something else going on with this pandemic and the vaccines. It's been extremely politicized, in part due to the social/political context it started in. It's sad that we can't all come together to figure out the best course of action. Instead, wearing or not wearing a mask, for example, has become an overtly political act.

Also, let's say everyone in the U.S. had gotten vaccinated as early as possible, by last July or thereabouts, what would the impact of that have been? Things were opening back up, and then the Delta wave hit. Perhaps if 90%+ had been vaccinated we wouldn't have had to shut back down again (although it wasn't really a shutdown this time, since pretty much everything is still open).

I have been getting the sense that this is a continuation of Trumpers vs. Democrats, and their respective apologists throughout the west. Whatever the hell this is, it's getting hot and if we don't figure out a way to cut through the shit it's going to get worse.

I'm all ears for a civilized discussion, but until we can agree on some epistemic framework (or narrative) we're not going anywhere except where the current ruling class pushes us.

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