Hacker News Reader

Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

For those in the EU, the upcoming travel pass will cover three categories of people: vaccinated, PCR-tested negative, and recovered (i.e. positive antibody test of immunity), https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/all-your-questions-on-...

> For travellers who have recovered from the virus: date of the positive test result, an issuer of the certificate, date of issuance, validity date

The bureaucratic stumbling block will be agreement on antibody and T-cell testing definitions across country borders.

View on HN

Sometimes I think I'm living in a parallel universe.

I know people who travel regularly and no one says anything to them. No quarantine, nothing. Most people on the streets here in Germany give zero fucks, groups of 5-10, no masks (even though there's a curfew between 10pm-5am due to an increase in cases).

And I traveled all the way from Moldova to Germany by car. No one, and I mean no one ever asked for a Covid test (which I had, of course, along with a positive antibodies test). Border guards, Hungarian border patrol, German Zoll, regular Romanian and German police, they cared about what's in the bags, didn't even mention Covid.

Hungarian border guards wanted to see a German work contract for whatever asinine reason, but I repeat, none of them ever asked for a Covid test or to at least keep the mask on (they need to see your face when checking the passport).

Whatever bureaucratic stumbling blocks there are, they have nothing to do with reality, it seems.

Because in most of the cases you are transiting and no one cares. If you would have said to any of those border guards that you are coming to stay in any of those countries, they would have cared and asked for more things. Saying this as I travelled recently from Germany through 4 countries. In the destination country they asked for test, proof of sickness or vaccine proof.

I'm pretty sure it's because you traveled by car -- which means the odds that you were exposing your fellow travelers was limited to the people that would get in a car with you.

I've traveled 2 times now by air from NYC -> London during Covid.

Last year, a 14 day quarantine on both sides, and on the NYC side, a phone call everyday to make sure I was quarantining.

This year on the London side, a 10 day quarantine, 1 negative test before flying, and 2 at home tests while quarantining, with a phone call everyday to confirm. I also got hassled at the airport because I didn't print out the day 2 and 8 receipt, just included the code on my passenger locator form under penalty of perjury.

So, the UK by air does care I suspect because of the increased exposure risk.

When was that?

I traveled in the opposite direction (more or less: Vienna to Bucarest) more than 3 months ago and wasn't asked either, but on the Hungary-Romania border, they put me in a tiny room (1/3 shipping container or so) with ca. 10 people and gave me quarantine papers. They didn't check bags.

I'm pretty sure they'd check for a test or vaccination now on the way back, I'm not eager to find out and will stay here in the Covid exile for a little longer.

That tiny room was probably the most risky thing you did.

Thus limiting those that are not vaccinated and making it difficult to move freely for them.

The travel pass is a horrible idea, that effectively will force many to be vaccinated.

That should not be the european way.

What should be the european way?

I ask this as I understand your concern about politics forcing personal decisions, yet I am not finding a pragmatic workable solution to the current crisis.

Personal freedom should be the european way, like it is with the free movement of labor.

You can use UK to gauge how the Covid situation will become and i dont think anyone will say there is a crisis now. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

The European way should be to treat the EU as one country and stop restricting movement. We've had Schengen for a long time, which meant no border checks whatsoever on most borders (we were driving through without even stopping or slowing down most of the time). With this vaccine passport, Schengen is pretty much history and that removes one of the main liberties the EU was offering.

Schengen has been deteriorating for a long time. Denmark has totally ignored it and has road checks at the border for more than 5 years now and other nations have done similar (although to a less extreme extent).

I’ve been to Denmark two years ago and I have no memory of any border check. It was by plane btw, maybe the checks are different but it would be surprising. It is totally possible however that the check was so fast that I don’t remember it. Do you have any information about this ?

Can't speak for Denmark. But usually those border-checks are done couple km/miles after the border. Police will just stop "random" cars/trucks and do a "routine check".

And "random" it might be as much as 50% of the passing cars.

Note I said “road checks” as in arriving by car. They totally closed the border and stop basically all non-Danish license plates for inspection. They are only supposed to be able to do this for emergencies for a max of 6 months. Instead, every 6 months they declare a new “emergency” so they can keep it closed indefinitely.

> The European way should be to treat the EU as one country and stop restricting movement.

At least in Italy, movement was restricted inside regions (sometimes provinces) of the same country due to the epidemy.

It's not nice for anyone involved, but the primary goal is to stop/limit the contagion. I'm an expat, so it goes against one of my interests, but I'm in favor of limiting border crossings, unless you can show that you won't spread COVID around.

As long as we can have quarantine of cities, then we will have quarantine of countries => deadlock, each country, like now will restrict movement from other countries, thus making the freedom of movement almost impractical for everybody.

So I think in this case (we are in a global pandemic) it makes sense to see freedom of movement not in a binary way (yes/no) but more in shades: allow more movement of more people as we get better at containing the pandemic.

Also please note EU is not a federal state, nor many of the founding members want that to be. So countries have a lot of power to decide how to handle pandemic. Still I think EU as a block did a good job negotiating vaccines in the context of not having a unity or a fast decision process.

So while I don't agree with restricting rights, I also don't agree with restricting rights of people who can move (like the ones vaccinated or immunised naturally) just because everybody cannot do it (cannot get vaccinated for personal or medical reasons).

As exemplified by the UK, enough people will want to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity. Then you don’t need to care about / oppress those who don’t want to / can’t get vaccinated.

I would like a lot to believe that this is how it will be in all EU states, but I am not sure.

As far as I can see the vaccination rhythm is decreasing in some countries and it is not even approaching 50% of population. It might be because of the back and forth with Astra Zeneca the EU did or it might be because EU is pretty big as in diverse with respect of culture, set of beliefs, approach to health …

Anyhow everyone is demanding EU to do something so their response will not be “wait so that everybody wants to be vaccinated”. Also because being that big means that heard immunity will not be reached.

Why not require vaccination?

Liberty. It's a terrible a precedent to restrict freedom of movement on a forced personal health decision. It's basically subverting your body to the state.

It’s a terrible precedent to let people prolong a pandemic and endanger innocent people’s lives in the name of their personal liberties.

If you don’t want to take measures to protect others, you can sit home for a while. It won’t kill you, and it won’t kill the people around you.

No, once everyone who wants it is vaccinated, their health is their problem not mine. If anyone is still scared of unvaccinated people, they can keep themselves at home forever, they don't get to force medical choices and restrictions on others.

If anyone is scared of getting vaccinated due to nonsense conspiracy theories, they can keep themselves at home forever, they don't get to force a deadly disease on others.

It's not deadly to the vaccinated. That's the whole point of the vaccines.

Or are you arguing that the vaccines don't work?

Vaccines work - but they are not 100% effective. If an unvaccinated, COVID positive person comes in close contact with 100 people that are vaccinated, a number of them will get sick. Way less than had they not been vaccinated. But way more than is acceptable.

> But way more than is acceptable.

Is it? Far fewer of them still will get severe symptoms. And this of course requires the unvaccinated person to actually be infected. From what I read, my risk (of at least an unpleasant time) is worse if that person had some other virus instead, since I'm much more likely to catch it and guaranteed to have unpleasant symptoms if so. At some point there needs to be a cutoff in risk level where it's low enough for a free society.

A bigger concern in my mind is that as long as the virus is spreading it is mutating, potentially becoming dangerous again to the vaccinated too. But this seems to be increasingly not likely with this particular category of viruses.

> If those 100 people are still worried about that, they can choose to keep themselves locked away forever.

You must be trolling, no way you're so self-centered.

"I like to drive with 200km/h through cities, those who don't like it or are scared of my driving can stay home"

"I like to take my aggressive pitbull for a walk without a leash, if you don't like it you can stay home"

"I like to play with guns, if you don't like me handling guns in public you can stay home"

It's all recklessness, and of course not acceptable. You know what's the better solution for those 100 vaccinated people? To force you to stay at home. Because they're 100, and you're 1. It's not the whole world that needs to adapt to you, it's the other way around.

Nice army of straw men. You're trying to redefine literally existing in public as recklessness.

Self-centered? The people demanding the nonvaccinated cease existing in society because of their fears are the selfish ones. I'm saying nothing about anyone else's choices or activities whatsoever. Restricting someone else's behavior and bodily autonomy is the selfish act.

100 people forcibly removing 1 person from society who has done nothing wrong? That's a concentration camp. This is mob rule, you're just okay with it because you're part of the mob.

You can't walk naked on the street, despite it "doing no harm", because of other people's sensitivities. You need to adapt to the society, it's not the society's duty to adapt to you.

If it bothers enough people, you can't do it. Call it law, call it mob rule, call it whatever you wish - it's just how the world works.

Exactly, it's not societies duty to adapt to you, and some societies are more beholden to principles surrounding liberty; there are plenty of other more authoritarian societies available for those who want more restrictions.

And the 100 vs 1 argument is very poorly thought out; we have just had a year of people shut in their homes for the sake of the few who were at risk. For the argument to suddenly swing on its axis, it would strongly suggest an authoritarian thrilled at the opportunity to exercise their will on others.

This isn't some theoretical scenario - we have plenty of experience with other infectious diseases. People choosing not to be vaccinated creates opportunities for the disease to spread and either infect those who can't be vaccinated (young children, immunocompromised people etc), or gives the disease opportunities to mutate and evade the vaccine in the future.

Your right to not be vaccinated does not trump public health concerns, or shouldn't.

I think people should get vaccinated, but 'think of the children' is not a strong argument since they seem to be at very low risk of becoming seriously ill or death compared to every other age category.

I was discussing in a more general context of vaccination rights/obligations, even though for the particular case of Covid19 you are right.

Note however that we still don't know exactly what long-term consequences Covid19 may have, so even with this, if we can avoid infecting young children, we should.

Actually, they do. Being vaccinated from an infectious disease is part of your civic duties, to help protect those who can't be vaccinated for various reasons.

There is even a ECHR decision to this effect.

I think they should require vaccination for travel (and schools and many other things) but I also think it is a problematic precedent.

How is limiting state power during a particular emergency situation a terrible precedent? The state can always grab more power at a later emergency, as history has shown. The difficult task is getting them to give up power once it is no longer needed for the emergency.

Well, one can always stay at home and protect his/her body. People spent whole lives in one city during Soviet era, so travel can be seen as luxury.

The precedent has been set for a long time now already, and it likely saves a lot of lives. https://www.who.int/ith/2016-ith-county-list.pdf

This isn't rocket science. I don't know where people get this idea that international travel was some kind of libertarian utopia before covid. There are a lot of things that restrict your ability to travel, and vaccinations are one of the least problematic.

> international travel was some kind of libertarian utopia before covid. There are a lot of things that restrict your ability to travel, and vaccinations are one of the least problematic.

You are obviously not referring to the EU, where, within Schengen, international travel was a libertarian utopia and one of the main reasons this bureaucratic construct had so many supporters despite the downsides.

> You are obviously not referring to the EU, where, within Schengen, international travel was a libertarian utopia

For, and only for, EU citizens. Which is a good start at utopianising travel, but not complete.

once you're inside schengen, traveling between schengen countries is seamless and magical, whether or not you are an EU citizen.

So you didn't have to follow road rules when travelling by car? You could bring weapons on board of planes when flying?

Seems like you had to follow rules regulations when travelling before, so explain to me what is the exact difference now?

It’s not personal health, tho, it’s public health.

I am going to assume you are American by the reference to liberty. Every US immigrant is /already/ required to have eight different vaccinations and a negative TB test. They quite literally take your blood before you can become a resident.

https://www.uscis.gov/tools/designated-civil-surgeons/vaccin...

Yes, but as I understand it, the EU purports to be a proponent of human rights as well.

Immigration to the U.S. is of course, a regulated activity. They can make you take a physical, pay a fee, inspect your background, call your mom and make sure you're a good person, etc, before accepting you as an immigrant. Sure. There's no limits to that, because there's no U.S. Constitutional protection for non-U.S. citizens and immigration can be stopped altogether if desired (assuming it's enforced).

> There's no limits to that, because there's no U.S. Constitutional protection for non-U.S. citizens

The fourteenth amendment plainly says “people” not citizens. There are others, but this is the most obvious one.

> nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;

I'm not sure why you're talking about immigrating to the EU when my understanding is the topic is simply traveling to the EU as a visitor.

There is no universal right to immigrate to the US, or anywhere else generally, so immigrants can be subject to whatever requirements the local govt decides at any given time. The discussion here was about a supposed "free travel" zone where citizens of member countries are giving up much of their autonomy in return for travel and trade freedoms.

But this kind of arguments are precisely the point when it comes to concern about precedents. It becomes less of a barrier to adding new rules just because the law already has vaguely similar rules.

There is no universal right for citizens of one country to enter another country either, even within the EU (there have always been limitations based on considerations of public security, public policy and public health grounds).

Yes I do believe there is literally a right of free movement:

https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/networks/europe...

All rights have limitations of course.

You are right - I should have qualified “even within the EU it is not without restriction”.

https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=457

Immigration is usually a much higher bar than travel.

Are any of those vaccines being distributed under an emergency use authorization without FDA approval?

> a terrible a precedent to restrict freedom of movement on a forced personal health decision

Agree, let's not be reckless–restricting movement for public health only has over seven hundred years of precedent [1].

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/historyquarantine.html

Some people cannot get vaccinated.

Yeah just like anyone should be able to travel or live in Asian countries without the proper vaccines. Jeez.

Are you talking about Covid vaccines ?

No, for years it was already required that you vaccinate against certain diseases if you want to visit some countries. It’s not a novel idea. It’s just common sense.

> The travel pass is a horrible idea, that effectively will force many to be vaccinated.

Good. It’s not like a concentration camp. There are other options if you don’t want to vaccinate.

You can just stay at home (I’ve been declined Schengen visa in the past for no reason), you can get PCR-tested. You also can get ill with Covid and then recover (hopefully).

Do labs store collected DNA results of PCR? I wonder if a database of DNA of millions of people will emerge on black market one day.

Covid PCR tests check for specific viral RNA. They’re not sequencing human DNA.

The potential exists for DNA harvesting. Dismissing it as impossible seems inaccurate.

>(CBS) — The largest biotech firm in the world wasted no time in offering to build and run COVID testing labs in Washington, contacting its governor right after the first major COVID outbreak in the U.S. occurred there. The Chinese company, the BGI Group, made the same offer to at least five other states, including New York and California, 60 Minutes has learned. This, along with other COVID testing offers by BGI, so worried Bill Evanina, then the country’s top counterintelligence officer, that he authorized a rare public warning. “Foreign powers can collect, store and exploit biometric information from COVID tests” declared the notice. Evanina believes the Chinese are trying to collect Americans’ DNA to win a race to control the world’s biodata.

https://www.klfy.com/national/u-s-intelligence-officials-say...

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/bill-gates-china-23m...

>China's push to control Americans' health care future: U.S. officials say the Chinese government is trying to collect Americans' DNA, and they believe a recent offer from a Chinese company for assistance in COVID-19 testing was suspicious. Jon Wertheim reports.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biodata-dna-china-collection-60...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/02/china-bgi...

I haven’t opened your first link, second looks like pure conspiracy theories. Covid, China, Bill Gates, Epstein!!11

If you’re afraid of getting your DNA sequenced while doing PCR test, please read up on the process of test, equipment, materials and costs involved.

The source is CBS news.

>"I haven't bothered to read, but I'm dismissing it as a conspiracy theory"

I hope you can appreciate the problems with that reasoning.

Yes, there are costs involved in data collection. If the data is valuable, organizations will foot those costs. We've seen this in the tech sphere. Why is it hard to imagine it in the health/biosecurity realm?

PCR tests don't analyze your DNA. They are only testing for the presence of some characteristic virus DNA segments. Other than showing your infection status, no information is obtained and consequently cannot be stored.

The swab has plenty of the patient's DNA. I interpreted the comment you're replying to as wondering if the original swabs are physically kept.

Why bother with PCR? You can do the same with any blood test included with any routine checkup.

> Thus limiting those that are not vaccinated and making it difficult to move freely for them.

> ... that effectively will force many to be vaccinated.

Yup, that’s the point.

No man is an island. You already can’t walk around doing literally whatever you want just because it’s your body you’re doing it with. You depend on other people, and other people depend on you (or at least can’t avoid intermingling with you, especially if you decide to travel internationally). Those who don’t get vaccinated slow down our recovery from the pandemic, putting other people’s health and lives at risk. Society has to make these trade-offs, and this one seems very reasonable to me.

I agree with your points, but I'd really really like to avoid giving the impression of... glee? "Look at those unwashed unvaccinated Trump supporters, so good they'll be forced to do things our ways now!". I'm not saying you're doing it, I'm just piggybacking on your comment.

I'm pretty much a high-modernist when it comes to vaccines - I think that having governments build sewage and create vaccines go into the same category of "damn useful for civilization". But it does involve curtailing liberties, and I just can't put it in a "fell good" category.

This subthread started about the EU. What does Trump have to do with this?

I completely disagree. As we say with code, there’s freedom in restrictions. I, for example, don’t ever have to worry about my safety because the “freedom” of others have been curtailed on several points, and I deeply appreciate that. There’s no inherently moral good in limitless freedom. Especially because humans are far from rational agents that can reasonably act without boundaries.

If you don’t want to be vaccinated or pay your taxes, you are, on some level, a danger to society.

>I, for example, don’t ever have to worry about my safety because the “freedom” of others have been curtailed on several points, and I deeply appreciate that.

Isn't is possible for someone to stab you? So in theory you could have some small degree of worry about your safety. Different people have different places they draw the line for an acceptable amount of worry vs an acceptable amount of freedom restrictions.

> Isn't is possible for someone to stab you?

In (most of) the EU, it’s illegal to carry a weapon of any kind unless you have a reason to do so (ie, going hunting). You can’t even carry pepper spray.

Interesting. But someone could break that law. So the law doesn't stop you from being stabbed.

The law doesn’t stop anything, at all. It just provides a framework for punishing people who break them.

Not entirely. There are people at the boarder searching some cars that come in, and searching some mail. Laws could be passed increasing those searches, and even searching everyone's house regularly. This would reduce the risk that you get shot, because some illegal guns would be found in these searches.

To take it to the extreme, the law could force you to live in a little cell locked away from everyone. This would prevent you from being stabbed by someone else (except one of the guards).

Like I said, there's a tradeoff between security and freedom.

By most of, it's about 50/50 and a bad law, since it almost never prevents abuse. I put it alongside band on specific melee weapons.

(As opposed to gun control.)

Use of it should constitute assault, which gets turned into legitimate self defense in various situations, just as if you were hitting someone.

Some of those bans and laws are just reasons to jail or fine people and do not in particular help with safety. After all, anyone can have a knife or martial arts on them anywhere for legitimate reasons, and you better have means to defend against these.

Fun fact: In Germany, anti-people pepper spray is considered a weapon but anti-animal pepper spray is not. There is no difference of course, and you're allowed to use anti-animal pepper spray in self defense.

This is getting stupid, if it wasn't already.

Requiring vaccination is "curtailing liberties".

Restricting movement due not being vaccinated is "curtailing liberties".

No shit. One can either be part of society or not. Society has minimum requirements if one wants to participate. One is free—exercise their liberty—to live as a hermit if they don't want to do either of these things. That's the price of admission of getting the benefits, whatever they may be, of interacting with other people. Added bonus, the rest of us don't need to hear about hermits complaining about their liberties then too.

Building sewage management infrastructure is not curtailing liberties. There is very little noise made about having to give up liberties because of the majority of other public works. Civilization decided that shitting on the sidewalk is not something that should be encouraged or condoned, so here we are with our sewage management infrastructure. We gain the freedom of not having to dig a hole and maintain an outhouse.

No one is giving up any "liberties" by getting vaccinated, but it's more likely they are acquiring liberties by getting vaccinated. At the very least it's the liberty of reducing the risk of dying.

This is all a "I don't want to do what you said I should do purely because you said it". Fine. The rest of us are at liberty to exclude or chastise these people.

But it's such a nonsense strategy, there is no way that this will provide eradication, covid is just too virulent and not deadly enough, it will remain in small pockets, remember there will be many countries that won't be able to afford this on going pharmaceutical tax. If it does provide protection vaccinate the at risk and be done.

The aim is to prevent the virus from clogging up the healthcare system. Countries which vaccinated all the citizens they could(e.g. Israel) already achieved that.

One dose of the Pfizer vaccine costs €16, while AstraZeneca's is less than €3. This is affordable by any measure.

Astra is hard sell to people under 50, and is looking less effective against variants.

The cost of Pfizer is a lot more than the per shot cost, you need highly specialised storage and distribution due to the low temperature requirements.

Not true. People generally prefer Pfizer, but will take whatever just to be done with it.

I had Astra, so did several people from my social circle. Hell, some took JJ being aware of its level of effectiveness.

The vaccines need to be stored at a low temperature - that's it. I doubt it adds more than €1 to the price.

You get refrigerated trucks, which are already common for food distribution, and essentially a fridge that can store a thousand doses and be re-used as new stock comes in.

It's not a negligible cost but it's far from highly specialized.

I'm in the US and I got my Pfizer shots at my local small hospital. They had storage because they have a pharmacy. Seems like an easy thing to just have, ya know. It was free to me. I'm 32. Was such an easy process to get. Big shrug

This is speculation. Just because the process had been made as easy a possible for you does not mean it was easy to implement.

I checked and the guidelines are as follows:

Before mixing, the vaccine may be stored in an ultra-cold freezer between -80°C and -60°C (-112°F and -76°F). Vaccine may be stored until the expiration date.

Before mixing, the vaccine may be stored in the freezer between -25°C and -15°C (-13°F to 5°F) for up to 2 weeks. The total time vials are stored at these temperatures should be tracked and should not exceed 2 weeks.

So once they reach their destination they can be put in a normal freezer, which in turn are abundant and cheap.

> there is no way that this will provide eradication

FWIW, it is not feasible to eradicate SARS-CoV-2 anyway since it can survive in certain types of animals as well. All the germs we eradicated thus far were limited to human hosts.

(Source: A German podcast that interviews professors of virology every week.)

In my country shitting on sidewalks, had higher priority than health or liberties. Dog walking was allowed, while exercise and outdoor activities were prohibited.

Society already excludes many people due to expensive housing, education etc... Living as hermit in a van is not that bad. But society should not expect taxes from excluded people :)

"One can either be part of society or not. Society has minimum requirements if one wants to participate"

You make it sound as if there is a fixed, god given set of rules for society. That's not the case. Societies rules are constantly being negotiated by society.

So your argument is not an argument at all. It boils down to "you have to follow the rules because you have to follow the rules".

Those requirements are welcome to be negotiated.

But negotiation often isn't occurring in good faith. There's way too much flat-earth- holocaust-denial- style arguments from those who "just don't want to be told what to do". Getting vaccinated doesn't take away someone's liberties; "I don't want to be told what to do" is not an argument against vaccination. Many of these people are just making noise, and it's getting old.

I'm not saying there aren't good arguments for not getting vaccinated, but it falls flat when those same people got vaccinated in order to attend public school or have state issued IDs or use passports or will bitch about a loved one dying because they failed to get vaccinated.

Mandating medical interventions is pretty much taking away someone's liberties. And your opinions about other people's opinions are also irrelevant as an argument.

Are you daft? I'm not offering what I think of other people's opinions as an argument about vaccination. I'm responding to your assertion that there is actually valuable debate to be had with rubes whose only argument is "I don't like being told what to do".

> Are you daft?

This style of dialogue is not welcome here. Try Reddit.

Well put and my thoughts exactly. Hacker News is a great place for all kinds of information and great discussions too.

Let's try and keep it that way.

Tone and discourse. We're not debating the merits of vaccinations here. We're talking about how this way of making conversation is ultimately toxic.

> There's way too much flat-earth- holocaust-denial- style arguments from those who "just don't want to be told what to do".

This is how you want the discourse to look like? Somebody puts an argument, and gets labeled flat earther.

Do you know Gell Mann amnesia? I shared an article the other day on facebook and got it flagged as "out of context". As it happens, it was something not out of context, just slightly against the mainstream. What do you think this did to my confidence in the mainstream?

And before you say that my article must have been wrong, let me remind you that the mainstream was against wearing masks 12 months ago. Hell, CDC was against wearing ffp2 masks... I don't know, 3 months ago?

Civil discourse and tone are much more important long term than just winning conversation points. Sure, go for points if you want. But every time you say things like "flat earth", you take a small chip out of the boat we're all in.

Following societies' rules is the basic principle of the social contract, I recommend reading a little about it starting from Hobbes' Leviathan.

But who draws up the social contract?

Hobbes lays out a mixture of natural/God aspects and society negotiated aspects. But I think they all boil down to an ongoing slow shift of what society accepts as a whole.

I think society has opinions and ideas that evolve into ethics and morals that are represented in laws.

It’s not a secret. In this case, rights are curtailed to require vaccines. This is deemed acceptable. If you don’t like it, convince your country mates to change their mind. Or move to a country that feels differently. Or move to the wilderness.

Why do you say it is "deemed acceptable", if there is an ongoing discussion about it?

Yes, certainly. The ongoing discussion is going on right now, we’re part of it as a very small amount of two strangers talking. I think it’s usually informal, but sometimes through debates, books, essays, etc. A good example are the Federalist Papers in the 18th century with back and forth on topics that ended up being articulated in the constitution, bill of rights, etc.

I think it also varies from country to country as it varies quite a bit.

> No one is giving up any "liberties" by getting vaccinated, but it's more likely they are acquiring liberties by getting vaccinated. At the very least it's the liberty of reducing the risk of dying.

As a person waiting to get his booster shot next week, I find this quite concerning. Those liberties we had and were taken away from us. Nobody cares about people dying. I am sitting now next to my mom who 1 month ago was diagnosed with terminal secondary cancer after all her check-ups were cancelled last year. So yeah, nobody gives a damn about anything else than seeming virtuos and better than others online. But no one cares any more about any other diseases or other people that are suffering, it’s all social signaling for the rich and well off people to show how moral they are, all while their lifestyle is supported by those that can’t afford to have any liberties.

To add to your argument: I've never encountered a discussion, much less a proposal to throttle all cars at 10 km/h. That would save around 4000 lives here in Germany alone and spare many more severely injured, scarred for their life.

It's not about saving lifes, it's about getting re-elected.

Would it, though? Sure, 4000 _might_ be saved from car crashes. But how many would die by not making it in time to a hospital? From the likely collapse of transportation, and distribution of goods? From the extra pollution of going that slow? From the general economic impacts of such a measure?

Except putting "curtailing liberties" into scare quotes, what are you saying, exactly?

This is exactly the kind of tone and comment I was speaking against. I am _pro_ vaccinations, I am _pro_ making them soft-mandatory, I was even pro other restrictions back before vaccines. All I said, in a rather moderate tone, is that I disagree with being happy about the downsides. Somehow in the kind of comments I'm speaking against, yours included, I don't see happiness that we're getting vaccinated per se. I don't see "yey, poeple won't be dying any more". I see a lot of "chastise these people".

I also see quite a lot of scare quotes and misrepresentation. I didn't say sewage was a restriction - I gave it as positive example. I didn't say (WHO would even say that?) that getting a vaccine is giving up liberties. That's stupid, really, it doesn't even make sense. I will say that not being able to do stuff without being vaccinated is a restriction. A worthy one, yes, and one I totally agree with, but by god, how can you even try to spin ... I'm not even sure what you're trying to spin, because the more I read your comment the more I realize it's just appeal to emotion and void of content.

Are you free to rant against categories of people? Yes. I just said it's not a nice thing to do, is all.

It's a shame your comment has been found to be polarising, I think your phrasing is quite moderate.

Looking at social media it feels like too many people are celebrating because they've been given another opportunity to show how virtuous they are. They're not one of those people that oppose vaccines and progress, oh no. The clout associated with putting up pictures of you with a needle in your arm is probably the most off-putting thing I'd gotten to gawk at.

My assessment is similar to yours. The situation just kinda is. We've had a novel viral agent, what followed is what you'd expect of a society that optimised for lack of novel viral agents. Now the viral agent is mostly gone and we have two new taxes to show for it: further encumberement of civil liberties and more revenue for the pharmaceutical industry.

It's not a bad result but there's no big win to point at either

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLbkrPu5STNCBLRjr/applause-l...

It contained a few key words/ideas, so it became immediately polarized. I guess given enough years we'll become inoculated against such failure modes, but meanwhile, it is what it is.

Seatbelt laws curtail liberties, too, but most societies have decided that the good effects massively outweigh the small freedom inconvenience of putting a buckle in a latch and going about your day.

Also, I bet you're vaccinated against polio. Do people feel their freedom has been limited because of being vaccinated against polio?

That is not how it works. Most people can not get vaccinated right now, even if they would want. And frankly nobody cares at this point.

> Yup, that’s the point.

I don't understand.

If we know that people who recovered from covid are effectively as if they were vaccinated, why do they have to wait until they have the privilege to be in the lucky age group to receive the vaccine before they can go visit a loved one they don't see for more than one year?

Are you assuming that everyone in the world is living in a privileged country where people as young as 30 can already access vaccines?

I read a lot from Americans complaining how bad their country was and all that, but hey, all my American coworkers got vaccinated and I can't visit my mom in Switzerland because she aged 68 just got her first shot yesterday. That's right, Switzerland not some third world country. Switzerland with all its pharma industry can't get the same vaccine production capacity and rollout throughput as your "utterly unorganized federal state that totally botched covid", as I often read Americans.

You don't actually have a birth-given right to enter all other countries - which might be a surprise to people with good passports that effectively used to let them travel anywhere (try entering the USA with a passport from Pakistan or Iraq and see how it compares with a Swiss passport!).

This is about what other countries want to restrict in terms of non-citizen's entering the country without isolation.

These are countries which have had a significant portion of their economy shut down for more than a year, so unsurprisingly they might want to ensure non-citizens who travel in have done something to limit the risk (even if that is isolating for 2 weeks).

Sure. But if the bar to entry is "scientifically proven immunity", then both natural immunity and the one induced by vaccinations are reasonable bars to entry.

You may say "ok, we don't have yet the beurocratic apparatus to accept natural immunity in our protocols and for the time being we're going to focus on vaccinated people, sorry".

You may not say "we want to force you to vaccinate, that's the whole point, duh"

That's a dangerous attitude. It feeds vaccine skeptics or denialists, who use this attitude as a proof that there is as much dogma in the "official scientific community" who are in big pharma's pockets. They are a bunch of nuts, but they are infecting otherwise reasonable people I know all around me.

Let's avoid setting up official policies and discourse tones which effective feed the trolls.

Why does this matter to Switzerland though?

They are only going to let people in they want, and they don't want people who could spread the virus, or bring it in.

Besides they are allowing people in with natural immunity too - as defined by a positive antibody test.

Just want to interject that a lot of us Americans are pleasantly surprised with just how quickly and effectively the vaccine rollout has gone. It has been a real turnaround for those living in states whose government was able to pull it off.

(But it should be noted that many states are not doing as well)

Yes kudos to America for actually having an effective rollout, even with all the Trump drama.

There are also many diverse ways the individual states have handled restrictions, it will be interesting to see if some consensus will be reached regarding keeping restrictions or not.

ELI5, if someone is not vaccinated isn't the only person being put at risk themselves? I have heard speculation of how this could cause more variants to arise which seems to be mostly just that: speculation. Or how this can be problematic for at-risk (elderly, immuno-compromised etc) but how frequently does that happen? I am 100% confident I have not encountered any such people in the last 6 months (or well atleast for any amount of time that would actually be harmful). FWIW I'm fully vaccinated, I'm genuinely curious about this.

That you haven't met someone who can't take vaccines is not a reason to dismiss them. Intuitively, such people may prefer to stay in self-quarantine to protect themselves, making you even less likely to encounter such a person during a pandemic.

However, getting vaccinated should also help reduce the transmission of the disease to people who haven't yet had a chance to get a vaccination even though they could; the pandemic will end faster than if you let it run its natural course.

For any vaccine (and the corresponding disease) there are people that cannot be vaccinated, but that can have quite severe symptoms (and/or die). If a person is not vaccinated - then this person can spread the disease among those vulnerable people. How this can be problematic - here is an example. One of the reasons Sweden has so high mortality from COVID is that during the first wave elderly care homes were hit hard, because workers spread the virus (mostly unknowingly). That you have not met such people in the last 6 months depends, I guess, on your social interactions style and on the structure of the society you live in in general.

Read this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/health/vaccine-nursing-ho...

"An unvaccinated worker set off an outbreak at a U.S. nursing home where most residents were immunized." One vaccinated resident died.

I hate pay walls...

A more accessible link

https://www.businessinsider.com/kentucky-nursing-home-unvacc...

Some takeaways:

* Elderly, especially with underlying illnesses should be vaccinated.

* One vaccinated elderly person died, though there are not many details in the article.

* 90% or 74 out of 83 residents were vaccinated.

Except that the people who are worried can simply get vaccinated themselves.

There may be a few people who can not be vaccinated (old and very sick), but it hardly seems appropriate to restrict billions of people just to protect those few. It would be more efficient to isolate them, which most of them probably already are (in care homes or hospitals).

Seems incredibly selfish to force vulnerable people into isolation because some people allow themselves to get absorbed into conspiracy theories about a harmless vaccine.

Requiring certain vaccines for travel has been something that has existed for decades and was never controversial.

It's not a harmless vaccine. You want to mandate vaccinating people who are at no risk from the disease, and expose them to unnecessary risks. And that means children - all to protect sick people who for the most part are already isolated. They are in hospitals or sick people homes, where you can protect them in other ways.

Also the comparison with other vaccines does not automatically make sense. All vaccines are not the same. At least in my country, so far recommendations for vaccinations had been "conservative" to only vaccinate against things that seem especially risky. There is a reason why people are not simply being vaccinated against all possible diseases.

> At least in my country, so far recommendations for vaccinations had been "conservative" to only vaccinate against things that seem especially risky.

Well then good news, COVID-19 is "especially risky".

I should have added - risky for the person who might contract the disease.

In any case, yes, both disease and vaccination have risks, that should be weighed against each other. Matters are complicated because risks differ among different age groups.

First of all it’s entirely false that it’s just “sick and old” people affected; there are also children and young adults with immune disorders who can live somewhat normal lives today because of minor sacrifices from others such as vaccinations. Secondly, sick and old people are also human beings who deserve consideration.

We mandate that people take all kinds of minor risks in life; that’s always been part of being in a society.

The reason vaccine advice is conservative is because anti-intellectualism and belief in conspiracy theories has gone off the charts and politicians now have to coddle these people. It’s a collective mental illness.

There is a nonzero risk to the vaccination. I really don't understand why you consider the plight of the people who can't get vaccinated, and dismiss the plight of the people who die or come down with severe disabilities from the vaccination.

The mental disease of many anti-intellectuals and conspiracy theorists is the inability or refusal to understand scale and proportion; it's the single source of an enormous amount of flawed logic.

Scale and proportion is the reason. 7 per 1,000,000 risk of blood clotting if you are a woman between 18-49 (and basically no risk if you're a man or outside that range, or use one of the vaccines that have not shown this risk). This is on the level of shark attacks and getting hit by lightning. Actually getting COVID has more serious risks and a much higher rate of being affected by them.

We regularly ask of citizens to do things that have a 7 per 1,000,000 risk of injury; it's a reasonable ask.

Your comparison does not make sense, though. The question is, how many people who are not at risk from the disease do you have to vaccinate, and how many people are there who can not be vaccinated and would contract Covid-19. Let's say with your numbers there are thousands of (young) people who die from the vaccination. How many people who can't be vaccinated would die if those young people would not get the vaccination?

What other risky things to we ask citizens to do, exactly? People certainly choose to do other risky things. But how many are mandated?

Even if we're only talking about 18-29, there have been 2,100 deaths from COVID in that age group in the US already. Even in the most generous interpretation, that means that it would be at least 10 times as dangerous for someone in that age group not to get vaccinated than it would to be vaccinated. The numbers are so blatantly obviously in favor of having everyone vaccinated.

Anyway, I'm done feeding a troll account created today.

Vaccines aren't 100% bullet proof. The few people effected are still people. If you were one of them, wouldn't you be fairly distraught by your point of view?

But what about the people who died from the vaccine? They don't bother you at all? I think their relatives are pretty distraught right now.

My Body, My Choice went the way of the gutter I see.

My family is vaccinated, but I don't see why this should be forced on people. Anaphylaxis and Thrombosis are rare reported conditions after vaccination - some even causing deaths. Vaccination should be a choice.

Your freedom ends where mine begins. Walking around with covid effects my freedom to walk around.

> the upcoming travel pass will cover ... and recovered (i.e. positive antibody test of immunity)

From the linked article:

>For travellers who have recovered from the virus: date of the positive test result, an issuer of the certificate, date of issuance, validity date

EU Travel Pass doesn't care about your antibodies.

> EU Travel Pass doesn't care about your antibodies.

Hmm, you are right :(

The rules are still evolving. They will need to care, since the people who recovered after a positive test are much fewer than people who recovered without being tested.

From https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_...

> The period of relevance of certificates depends on scientific evidence and will be determined by the verifiers following their national rules. As new scientific evidence is emerging, the periods for which certificates are relevant for waiver of applicable public health requirements could be adjusted ...The regulation also introduces some basic principles, for example, setting the maximum validity period of the certificate of recovery at 180 days. These principles could be adjusted by the Commission through delegated acts to align with new scientific evidence once it is available.

Going strictly by the text above, what would happen to the recovered people after 180 days? If they have immunity they cannot get another positive test, so no recovery certificate and no travel? Or if you already recovered more than 6 months ago, you cannot travel?

It will come down to some metric of immunity, which is apparently "TBD" but will almost immediately be a concern, as all stakeholders look more closely at the rules, logic and implications.

The EU and many western governments are not dictatorships, relying on human judgement to enforce policy. If proposed policies fail basic checks of reason and fairness, humans at border checkpoints can exercise judgement. If and when policy makers find their policy is not enforceable, they can improve the policy until it is supported by science, citizens and enforcers.

The travel industry expects these passes to bring their customers back. They will not sit quietly while their recovered/immune customers are blocked by incompetent bureaucracy from spending money across the EU, without a substantive scientific case.

I wouldn't bank on them extending "recovery" duration... they'll simply ask for proof of vaccination after those 180 days.

They cannot legally force/mandate vaccinations, and they repeat that statement throughout the docs.

At most, they could insist that recovered people continue to get PCR tested: either you're negative and free to travel, or it will be a false positive, then you wait two (?) weeks and get a magical DHCP lease for 6-month "recovery certificate".

That would equate to a PCR-test industry tax on travel, which opens up several avenues for legal/policy challenge, e.g. test types, costs, subsidies, profit margins, supply chain ownership, benefits, numerical parameters, equipment calibration, performance (false positives/negatives).

Ludicrous rules don't punish people (who find workarounds), they decrease state power and credibility, reducing compliance with other, sensible, regulations. Sanity will eventually prevail, as long as citizens hold all policy proposals to high standards of transparency, reason and science.

Airplanes and hotels and tourist-destination cities want their customers back, and they will advocate on their behalf. The key is to avoid fights about specific interventions (like decade-old vaccines) and focus on laws (including liability) developed over centuries, and immune systems battle-tested even longer than laws.

This is all speculation. We'll see soon enough how this all plays out - I was just expressing my doubt that any country will say "if you had COVID 3 years ago, you're free to travel". They might lift restrictions completely, but if they keep restrictions, I don't expect them to be lifted for people who had COVID really long ago. There will be other rules, but "had COVID more than 180 days ago" seems an unlikely one. That's all.

There have been studies which claim that prior infection by SARS1 (2003) has conferred some immune protection against SARS2 (2020). That would be 17 years, not 180 days.

With billions of dollars at stake on multiple sides of proposed policy, there is sufficient financial incentive to study very closely the mechanisms of both natural and artificial immunity.

Policy makers can selectively highlight or ignore science, but not forever. In the US, some early policies were overturned by later court rulings, as data became available for lawsuits.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com