Comment by Closi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Closi | Hacker News Reader

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> People need to accept the reality that spreading a disease is causing harm, and that preventing people from causing harm is a core function of the rules of society.

Mandating vaccines is going a step further - it's forcing people to do an action, which might reduce their chances of causing harm in the future.

If the sole goal was to prevent people to cause harm to others, we should prevent people from driving (they hit others with their cars) or we should stop people from being drunk (they end up fighting others, and also driving drunk).

So clearly actually, the more nuanced answer is that society is, amongst other things, a balance between protecting others and personal liberty (and these things often fight against each other).

(I'm personally vaccinated, and think as a society everyone should be encouraged to vaccinate, but that it has to be an individual decision and that we shouldn't force people to put things in their body that they don't want to put into it).

I was in the same boat as to thinking vaccination should be an individual decision but I have come around to the idea of mandates in the last month.

As far as I can tell there is no reasonable justification for an individual not to get vaccinated unless they are immunocompromised. It is a purely selfish thing to do. Choosing not to get vaccinated is essentially saying that you want everyone else to get the vaccine but not you because there is some infinitesimal risk involved. If you have to choose between the vaccine or covid you would be very irrational to choose covid, so you are essentially saying you want there to be herd immunity without personally taking any actions. It is pure selfishness.

The longer this goes on the clearer the damage and risk have become. If we don't reach herd immunity the economy will shut down again, hundreds of thousands of people will die in our country alone, unknown thousands more will have disabilities, and all of the problems that come along with social distancing will continue. It is a huge waste of life and resources and happiness in return for what?

Meanwhile the vaccine that has already been administered to hundreds of millions of people with virtually no long term negative effects. With a mandate everyone will be much better off, especially those who wouldn't get vaccinated as they are avoiding the much greater risk of the potential damage covid can cause.

My guess is that more companies will follow suit and I applaud it. The VA hospitals were the first and there will be many many more to come. The government wont ever do it so it is left to private businesses. It is becoming clearer and clearer to me that this is the right call.

Your post seems to ignore natural immunity completely. As in people who have had covid already and are immune, or already have cross reactive immunity from a coronavirus strain in a previous cold season.

This Doctor in the Wall Street Journal last month brings attention to herd immunity gained through previous infection.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-power-of-natural-immunity-1...

You are right it does ignore it. I would be fine to make an exception for someone who has natural immunity. It might make it needlessly complicated which explains why businesses are making it simple and mandating vaccinations.

>As far as I can tell there is no reasonable justification for an individual not to get vaccinated

How about, I don't trust the vaccine research?

You can expect rational people to trust science (which is essentially trusting nature to behave in a regular manner), but you cannot expect people to trust "scientists" just on the basis of rationality, simply because they are human, and is coerciable as the next guy..

That's a fair assessment, my initial comment only focused on one half of the balance you're highlighting.

The problem is, you know what I don't want to have put in my body even more than the vaccine? The coronavirus. The fact that it's some anti-vax luddite coughing on my kid and putting the virus in their body that way instead of a nurse administering a shot is just a minor implementation detail.

We've banned leaded gasoline and smoking indoors because we recognize the harm caused to others, even if it's hard to directly pin-point a specific cigarette to a cancer case. We need to pull society into the 21st century and acknowledge that spreading viruses has the same dynamic.

Since we can't effectively hold people liable for the damage they cause (eg, suing or imprisoning the person who negligently spread the disease when someone gets hospitalized or dies) I don't see any practical option other than requiring the vaccine. Maybe the liability model could work- if you went out in public unvaccinated, you're held liable for the medical expenses, missed work or wrongful death of the people you exhaled the virus onto.

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