Unvaccinated People Belong on the No-Fly List | Hacker News Reader

Unvaccinated People Belong on the No-Fly List

theatlantic.com

26 pointsAndrewBissell36 comments

It's something to see the woke crowd go unabashedly totalitarian against those that disagree with them. Invoking a concept (no fly list) they would undoubtedly have argued in wrong for it's original recipients (and I agree) to target their now enemies. Populism is a horrible disease, and just because you agree with its aims in a particular instance does not make it justifiable.

My argument for why we should strongly support e.g. gay rights has always been that it's not acceptable to wait until the government opposes something I want to do. The same applied here. Whether you want a vaccine (and I have mine) or not, embracing authoritarianism towards those that disagree with you is incompatible with basically everything from the enlightenment forward, and should be opposed.

Exactly right. I disagree with antivaxxers. There is little argument against getting vaccinated. But to advocate for this. This is just unbelievable. As you said, it's a fawning embrace of authoritarianism just because you agree on position. Yeah, I agree on getting vaccinated, but I don't agree with these despotic measures.

https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/GW&smallpoxinoculation.html

>There is little argument against getting vaccinated.

You would be immensely surprised as to the varying reasons and literature and science brought to bear as to why this statement is incorrect.

Longitudinal cross sectional studies, for one, comes to mind.

Never before used technology to innoculate the ENTIRE population at once, never having been used before also comes to mind.

That only scratches the surface for people objecting to being forced, does not get into nitty gritty details.

Those alone should be sufficient to not inject the entire human population on planet earth with an experimental unapproved medical treatment.

There are _some reasons_ but cost/benefit would heavily favor vaccination. That's what I'm saying. And. like I said, while I don't agree with the stand, I also disagree with the proposed draconian measure as it clearly impinges upon liberty as afforded by our constitution.

Cost/benefit to whom? The disease according to all stats around the world primarily will kill those over 75 who are already ill and frail, under that age, which for most of the world is the AVERAGE life expectancy, the chance of death is near zero.

Avg death age in US from covid is 80. thats HIGHER than the life expectancy. I am not saying who cares about seniors, but, somehow we lost the thread that old people die, and that this happens and is normal.

edit

and that we shouldnt blow up the entire planet and inject everyone with experimental drugs just to save 10,000 over 80's

Where is there never before used technology?

Just to add to my post above: I'm a rich man. This will not be a burden to me or to any of my peers. I oppose this out of belief about how our society should treat people, not because of some personal inconvenience. I can still do whatever I want, as can most readers here I expect. Like any authoritarian laws, this only really impacts groups that society didnt like anyway. It is the most unfair possible kind of idea. It amazes me that in one breath we hear ridiculous ideas about equity, and in another, we hear things like this that promote "hard" unfairness. All authoritarianism is hypocritical, but this is blatantly so.

> Populism is a horrible disease

Could you explain what you mean by this? What's your definition of populism, and what does it have to do with this issue?

This theme stretches elsewhere in the pandemic discourse. There's an interview appearing alongside this article, where they discuss the failures of the FDA in approving the vaccine for children and booster shots.

The FDA's comments suggest they're approaching, say, the boosters from the standpoint of managing perceived need rather than safety. This shouldn't be their role. If I want to purchase a delta booster from Pfizer and it's safe and there's a reasonable argument for its efficacy, why shouldn't I? To help manage public perception that the initial dosages aren't effective?

My perception is this weird authoritarianism cuts both ways, against the antivaxxers as well as the provaxxers. The common thread is the failures of authority itself. So much is being revealed in this time about the castles made of sand; why the underlying problems don't get even more attention is beyond me.

Do we ban foreign flights too?

I'm vaccinated, but I don't understand this easy acceptance of banning people from services because of vaccination status. Do we ban ex-felons from flights?

Yes, people who aren't immunized pose a risk. But the risk is toward unvaccinated people. Much much less toward people immunized --we can also wear a mask if we feel uncomfortable.

What makes me more uncomfortable is not private individuals clamoring for these no-fly lists (we don't have ideals to uphold liberty) but journalists, who should be familiar with defending liberty and the risk this proposition poses to individual liberty, so freely advocating dictatorial despotic measures is concerning and disappointing.

It'd be like Snowden saying, you know what, yeah, droning a few innocents is bad, but you know what, we'll get rid of the baddies, it's worth it. Drone 'em Hillary. FFS! I hate being crass, but have we all become P*ies?

Freedom is more important than health. Navalniy knows this. Every dissident in jail or prison knows this. Whatever happened to journalists, seriously?

Its religious extremism. Just because it's "mainstream" in certain circles, it's no different than any other theocratic behavior and needs to be opposed

The author is not a career journalist, but a former DHS assistant secretary. And a lot of your points are addressed in the article; for example, flying is not a right.

For the civil libertarians, is it absolute? What if it was ebola? What if the mortality rate was 5 or 10%? If not, where, exactly, is the line?

Do you recall no-fly lists when Ebola broke out, because I don't.

Flying in a plane at all adds risk. Radiation, personal injury, death, etc.

Should we ban everyone with any sort of transmissible disease from flights? Do we ban people with Influenza from flying, if there are elderly on a flight?

Uhm, Fox News was filled with talking heads ranting about Obama’s ebola pandemic and calling to ban flights from Africa.

I’m sure if there had been and actual ebola pandemic, real Americans would have chosen freedom.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/how-to-stop-ebola-in-america-...

Flight bans are different from putting people on no-fly lists.

Were people asking to put what everyone who was possibly within coughing distance of someone with Ebola put on a no-fly list?

Flight bans are a blunt weapon. It may be necessary to use if there is a good reason.

No-fly lists affect due process and freedoms of Americans (I am not concerned with what Canada does or Guinea does, they can manage their own countries). It's fundamentally different.

I’ll just have to take your responses to my what if question as freedom being absolute. Ebola pandemic, 10’s of thousands testing postive every day, Ebola vaccine widely available and anti-vaxxers should have un-restricted travel rights.

Why on earth would anyone want to fly in the scenario you describe? It's only because Covid isn't that lethal that all these mandates and coercion are needed to get people to avoid or be immunized against it.

I'm simply interested in where civil libertarian absolutists draw the line. Absolutes are absolutes. Or are they fuzzy?

Maybe the line is the number of deaths prevented by a terrorism no-fly list.

Contrast with: https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/mob-morality-and-th...

> the Covid-unvaxxed, who are being portrayed as walking cesspools of germs who might contaminate the Sanctified Brethren (the vaccinated).

I thought that series was exceptionally well-written. Since vaccinations are working to prevent mortality, expense, and suffering though, it didn’t need to be written.

I also found the series to be quite thought provoking, despite being a bit long winded.

Though I disagree that "it didn't need to be written". There was definitely some anti-vaccine undertones, but IMO the real criticism was of totalitarianism in general.

Through that lens, perhaps you would agree that it was a worthwhile piece?

The themes I recommend are about the heritage of festivals and human sacrifice. The writing is impressive, but I wouldn’t recommend it as strong reasoning that liberty is threatened by totalitarian forces.

Both vaccinated and unvaccinated persons can be COVID infected and infectious.

Vaccination assists the immune system to better fight the infection. That is all.

So a no-fly list would need to pertain to those who are not verifiably COVID negative. This is especially critical in the case of the Delta strain which is far more infectious, even with vaccinated persons, than the earlier strains. But we also have to consider that tests have been shown to give both false positives and false negatives. So the risk cannot be totally eliminated.

This right here. The vaccine's should never have been marketed as being able to stop infection. Given the history of previous coronaviruses it makes no sense that a vaccine would suddenly be able to stop people from getting infected by the disease. The vaccine's only strength is in decreasing the severity of symptoms. This can lead to less infection since there will be fewer people who hit the threshold for a transmissible viral load (without going in to the deep end on infectious vs non-infectious viral loads), but does not stop infection entirely.

Lists. Forced vaccinations. McCarthy and Stalin must be laughing in the afterlife. How did we get this hell bent on forcing the will of others? Milgram’s obedience study was very poorly conducted, and very faulty, but he would have no problem with participants today.

>Forced vaccinations.

Where? Please cite.

Besides major companies and politicians calling for mandatory vaccinations?

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