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Comment by pornel | Hacker News Reader

Here's the deal: you don't have to take the vaccine, but promise to stay away from people, and not burden hospitals when you get covid.

It's not your personal choice when it can harm other people (e.g. immunocompromised people who can't get the vaccine themselves, other people who need ICU beds).

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Let's apply that logic to everything, then, and see how it works out. You're fat or obese and have health outcomes stemming from those choices? Enjoy your heart attack, fatty. You get injured doing something "non-essential?" Your mountain bike accident sounds like your problem. You're a smoker and get lung cancer? Sorry, no treatment is available for you.

You don't get to dictate the health choices of others. And if we're going down that road (which you seem to embrace) a vaccine against a disease with such a low death rate hardly seems a logical place to start. But that's presuming logic is the starting point, a conclusion lacking evidence.

I don't support denying healthcare based on choices. But I heard that some hospitals in Texas have started using it during triage. And there is certainly precedent for that. E.g. try getting a transplant if you are still engaging in the behavior that caused you to need one in the first place. So if a hospital has only one bed available and two people to take it, one of whom is vaccinated experiencing a severe breakthrough case, and another is someone who chose not to get vaccinated, the hospital has to make a choice on who is most likely to survive.

> some hospitals in Texas have started using it during triage

This is false. The "leaked" internal discussion document has been repudiated by its author, and the group of hospitals discussing it.

Smoking is already banned in places where it can give other people lung cancer. Cycling and driving is also regulated to reduce risk to other road users and pedestrians.

Putting lives of other people at risk is not your "health choice".

Those aren't equivalent.

Preventing obesity is *very* hard, or we wouldn't have obese people. Who actually WANTS to be obese?

Preventing your ICU trip due to covid is as easy as driving to the pharmacy once or twice and spending 20minutes there.

It's easier than grocery shopping.

But you're forgetting that currently these vaccines are not really doing a great job at decreasing hospitalizations in at-risk populations. Look at Israel. Thanks.

By "look at Israel", are you referring to this claim debunked by the AP?

https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-644288348135

> CLAIM: The newest Israeli data on COVID-19 infections indicate a complete vaccine failure on every level. The data from Israel shows that nearly all serious cases and deaths are among the vaccinated.

> AP’S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. The claim ignores the fact that Israel has only a fraction of the COVID-19 cases that it had in January, before vaccines were widespread. Furthermore, the majority of adults in Israel are now vaccinated with two Pfizer shots. No vaccine is perfect at preventing breakthrough cases, but the data shows vaccines are reducing the number of people who are severely ill, hospitalized or die from the virus.

Okay, I looked, and found this.

https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-...

I will happily stay away from hospitals if they stop regulating drugs, and medical treatments.

Also: I did take the vaccine.

Do you honestly think a world with unregulated drugs and medicine is a better one?

No.

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