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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

> As I mentioned in another comment, let's not forget that preventing spread through all these measures is all in service of a greater goal: avoiding strain on public health infra.

If the ends justifies the means, what other public health interventions should we carry out, even in cases where there's no direct harm to society[1]? Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US. Should we have blood pressure/cholesterol "passports" to pressure people into being healthier?

[1] ie. you getting infected and infecting other people, as opposed to the more tenuous link of you getting infected, having to go to the emergency room, causing the emergency room to go over capacity and causing someone to die because of lack of care

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> Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US. Should we have blood pressure/cholesterol "passports" to pressure people into being healthier?

Is heart disease exponentially contagious with the potential to strain medical resources in a matter of days?

Again, these aren't interventions against social freedoms, rather an intervention to prevent a public service from being DDoSed, so to speak. The measures a matter of _hospitalization_. It's pointless to compare a "cause of death" metric to a "plain case count" metric.

>Is heart disease exponentially contagious with the potential to strain medical resources in a matter of days?

How is this relevant when vaccinated people are still contagious?

>Again, these aren't interventions against social freedoms, rather an intervention to prevent a public service from being DDoSed, so to speak.

Just like banning encryption isn't against social freedoms, but rather an intervention to prevent baddies from winning?

>> Is heart disease exponentially contagious with the potential to strain medical resources in a matter of days?

> How is this relevant when vaccinated people are still contagious?

Because while still contagious, they are not exponentially contagious. It's not like I left out that important qualifier in the statement you are replying to.

Vaccinated people can spread in case of a breakthrough infection and infections are less likely to occur in vaccinated individuals.

> Just like banning encryption isn't against social freedoms...

Way to go attacking a straw man, and not even a particularly clever one at that. What does encryption have anything to do with vaccination and vaccination passports?

> Because while still contagious, they are not exponentially contagious.

All contagion is exponential, but they have a much lower exponent.

>Because while still contagious, they are not exponentially contagious. It's not like I left out that important qualifier in the statement you are replying to.

1. source?

2. It really wasn't obvious because you failed to link "vaccinated" with "not exponentially contagious".

>What does encryption have anything to do with vaccination and vaccination passports?

In the previous comment you basically made the argument that the measures are justified because they're not "interventions against social freedoms, rather an intervention to prevent a public service from being DDoSed". I just took that argument to its logical conclusion. Law enforcement resources are stretched pretty thin, right? Why not give them a helping hand as well by allowing them to eavesdrop on everyone's communications? After all, it's not an intervention to decrease public privacy, it's an intervention to prevent law enforcement resources from being DDoSed.

1. For one, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br... -- the jury still seems out as to by how much exactly the spread is prevented, it seems to depend on the vaccine and social demographics of the population studied. But at least for vaccines approved for use in the US and EU, the reduction seems significant.

2. I mean, this whole discussion is rather about the merits of vaccinations no?

> ... I just took that argument to its logical conclusion ...

This is just dishonest and misleading chain of reasoning:

- Law enforcement and public health are both public resources, yes, but of different nature and not comparable. I thought that's rather self-evident. Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that law enforcement is indeed stretched thin, aiding law enforcement takes on an entirely different form than aiding the public health sector.

- Encryption is not analogous to vaccination passports at all. It's not even an apples to oranges comparison, more like, apples to cars.

Please, do learn how metaphors work.

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