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Comment by Cederfjard | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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 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.

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.

> 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?

"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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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 :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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