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Comment by adamiscool8 | Hacker News Reader

>We all have to take risks and some of them are mandated for the good of society.

What are some other risky and irreversible interventions mandated upon the individual for the good of society?

Anything we allow parents to do to or for their children or force their children to do qualifies.

We generally don't allow parents to force risky irreversible things onto their children. But also, the view of all citizens as simple children of the State seems...problematic.

> We generally don't allow parents to force risky irreversible things onto their children.

We absolutely do, but that is a completely different conversation.

If that doesn't work for you I am sure you can't object to conscription as a societal burden.

Where are you going with this line of discussion? Or did you just want me to think of something that wasn't medical?

Conscription is a good example of a social burden unfairly dispersed and widely objected to — at least in the West. My point is the underpinning of this “one more mandatory intervention is no big deal” view is not based on reality. The State stopped forcing irreversible interventions on adults when eugenics went out of (polite) fashion. The belief compulsory acts are normal and good policy is based on something like a public health bureaucracy fantasy version of economics’ perfectly rational actor models.

You make a very good point, but like in times of invasion where conscription is something I would argue is necessary, in times of other emergency then there is the possibility we must give up some independence of our person and perform compulsory acts. This may not be as obvious as getting a needle jabbed into your arm, but rationing water and food, joining in labor to clear wreckage/debris or rebuild, or taking arms in defense during invasion are all examples of similar situations.

I recognize that it is ill-advised to normalize forced medical intervention and I thank you for pointing out that my initial comment appears to be doing that, and I shall make a point to reflect on this, but I do maintain that during times of crisis the state/society should have the right to compel individuals in ways that are otherwise not acceptable.

The problem with that line of thinking, to me, is we have state apparatuses fully and ever-increasingly capable of manufacturing crises to compel individuals in ways that would otherwise not be acceptable. On top of that, I see a qualitative difference between a compulsion of labor or rations impeding bodily autonomy in a superficial sense, and the compulsion of injections (or lobotomies, or sterilization) which seems to strike a deeper and more serious infringement on bodily integrity. Given those factors, I think it's very crucial that societal decisionmakers err towards preserving individual independence and are not misleadingly guided towards other ends.

I see where you are coming from, but I would caution against such comparisons to lobotomies and eugenics. Those interventions were not in response to a large-scale crisis but were novel methods of solving problems for which there had been no previous solution.

I think my comparisons are more apt because they involve sacrifice and risk, but not incontrovertible harm. People getting the vaccine were mitigating a personal risk which at that time happened to be in line with what was believed to be a societal need (herd immunity) -- a minute chance of an adverse effect, compared to the yet-unknown effects of covid itself was deemed to be acceptable.

Was it a poor decision? Looking back on it, yes. If placed in the same position of a society-disrupting and mass-death causing pandemic with a new vaccine which has all the signs of being able to fast-track herd immunity and save millions of lives, would I be fine with mandatory vaccinations? Probably. Should we be incredibly careful when it comes to doing things like that and putting in place the mechanisms for similar actions? Absolutely.

Schools spring to mind.

Schooling is mandatory but schools are not. That process is maybe arguably risky, but also not irreversible.

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