Comment by shkkmo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shkkmo | Hacker News Reader

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> And I think that's a very underhanded bullying argument to coerce people into giving up their freedom or having medical treatment they don't want, to suggest that they are responsible for killing others because of choices like this. Because there are hundreds of ways we could all change our choices and indirectly save people,it does not always mean we are responsible for them if we don't.

That is a frankly ridiculous and immoral attitude. If you refuse to make minor accomodations when presented with choices that can reduce the amount of risk you cause others, you ARE responsible.

If you choose to dive drunk, you are responsible. If you choose to lie about the the status of your STD testing, you are responsible. If you actively discourage people from taking a safe vaccine, you are responsible. If you choose to go un-masked and unvaccinated when there is significant local spread, you are responsible. I don't beleive the best response to this is vilification or shamming, but that doesn't change the moral truth here.

If you have "hundreds of ways" we can make minor changes to save the lives of others lives, please share them because that sounds likr really useful information.

I think communication is best done with honesty and politeness and without censorship. That does not mean we absolve people of the responsibility of theor choices

The descent into authoritarianism is also a significant risk, but vaccine mandates are NOT that start of a slippery slope. They have been around for many decades and they haven't resulted in any slipping. If anything, getting people riled up about vaccines is a way to justify censorship and distract from the ever growing power of the surveillance state.

> That is a frankly ridiculous and immoral attitude. If you refuse to make minor accomodations when presented with choices that can reduce the amount of risk you cause others, you ARE responsible.

I know that's what you believe, it's not what I believe. I believe it is ridiculous and immoral to coerce and force people into medical treatment for a relatively minor illness that others have freely available access to effective vaccines against. To be sure it is worse than the flu, but this is not smallpox, the bullies and fearmongers making comparisons like that were simply lying and spreading misinformation. And if it was similar to smallpox, I think it would be quite clear and people would be far more inclined to get vaccinated.

And I disagree with your idea of blame, as I said above the same argument can be made about overweight people and others. Maybe you are responsible for the death of starving children right now because you were browsing the internet instead of donating your time or money?

And it absolutely is authoritarianism because it is not about the virus or even the vaccine itself really. It is a totally politicized tool that authorities are using. That should have been clear when people were flip flopping between being skeptical of the "Trump" vaccine and calling border closures racist and refusing to acknowledge natural immunity and all that other nonsense. It's not the slippery slope because this is already authoritarianism. Telling people they can not go about their lives, they can't work or go to school, tracking and controlling where they go, who they meet, what business they do. It's already here.

If mandates were such a non-issue, why was it just a few months ago the experts and politicians were all lying and denying there would be mandates? Are they just pathological liars who will lie about trivial things that don't matter? Or did they know the seriousness of the issue and decide to lie and mislead until the opinion polls looked better for them? Neither option inspires a lot of trust in them.

Holy edits!

The internet is exhausted with you, dude. With people with no scientific background to speak of misreading and mischaracterizing the conclusions of an abundance of the medical community. Trying to convince you why giving a shit about others (who can’t get vaccinated for legitimate reasons, e.g) is important, or why you could be host to mutations whether you like it or not if you are infected, and will statistically be host to an extended period in which mutations can occur for the unvaccinated, risking the rest of the population? And it can all be addressed with a couple shots and maybe a sum total of 30 minutes out of your life? A couple days if we count being a bit ill from the nervous response?

We’re at the adults table now dude. And people are tired of this goofy shit. Mandates wouldn’t be necessary if this was a country of adults.

> I know that's what you believe, it's not what I believe.

You honestly don't believe you are responsible for the knowable results of your own actions?

> a relatively minor illness

I don't see how you can honestly use this phrase to describe the worst pandemic since HIV.

> others have freely available access to effective vaccines against.

The vaccines both reduce spread and reduce the risknof serious illnessm. They do not eliminate that risk so choosing to remain unvaccinated bis choocing to increase the risk for both the vaccinated and the other unvaccinated people around you. This is risk that you ARE RESPONSIBLE for so you better make sure it is worth it.

As for the rest, please try reading what I actually wrote rather than making assumptions and arguing against partisan strawmen.

Where did I advocate for vaccine mandates?

Where did I advocate for continued lockdowns?

Where did I call border closures racist?

Where did I compare covid to smallpox?

Natural Immunity does seem superior to vacination alone, but having both is even better.

You seem to be projecting partisan talking points onto me to divert from the serious flaws in your moral philosophy and grasp of reality.

I don't see how you can conceivably believe that covid vacinations should be a choice but that the people making that choice are not responsible for the effects of that choice. Being responsible for the results is part of having choices.

I wasn't accusing you of those things, if that wasn't clear. And I used relatively minor in context (which you deleted). Hopefully that was clear, I'm not denying it may be on the order of 1% death rate among the unvaccinated which is not to be taken lightly.

And I know many people find it inconceivable that I have an anti authoritarian aversion to forced medical treatment, and that worries me for the future far more than covid. I'm not expecting to change any minds, but I'll put forward my position now and again.

I completely understand the other point of view, even if I believe a lot of people have arrived at it due to a campaign of fearmongering and politicization.

> And I used relatively minor in context

I see no part of the context makes that would make your statement accurate.

> And I know many people find it inconceivable that I have an anti authoritarian aversion to forced medical treatment,

That isn't what I find inconceivable. I entirely understand why people are opposed to this. What I find inconceivable is that you believe that people who choose not to get vaccinated don't bear a moral responsibility for the effects of that choice.

You seem fixed on thinking I am arguing something I am not.

> I see no part of the context makes that would make your statement accurate.

And yet you managed to cut it neatly away, what are the odds?

relatively minor illness that others have freely available access to effective vaccines against. To be sure it is worse than the flu, but this is not smallpox

> That isn't what I find inconceivable. I entirely understand why people are opposed to this. What I find inconceivable is that you believe that people who choose not to get vaccinated don't bear a moral responsibility for the effects of that choice.

I don't say they don't bear a moral responsibility for the effects of that choice. I said that choice does not make a person responsible for the death of another who might have died because they couldn't get a bed (for example). And accusing them of it is dishonest bullying.

Countles choices we make every day directly and indirectly affect the world around us including others.

Choosing to go to the beach and drive your car, increasing traffic on the road and contributing to the chance of someone else being in a wreck and dying does not make you responsible for that. You could quite easily have chosen not to go to the beach though. You had no compelling need to go. It was a selfish choice to go. And that's all fine.

> And yet you managed to cut it neatly away, what are the odds?

I cut away the rest of the sentence because it didn't provide any modifier or qualifier that change the meaning or strength of your highly inaccurate claim.

Take a look at how the sentence would read if you removed "relatively minor" from it? Your overall point would remain intact.

Point in fact, you haven't even tried to justify the "relatively minor" claim and instead complain about being taken out of context when that context is easily available to the reader.

> I said that choice does not make a person responsible for the death of another who might have died because they couldn't get a bed (for example)

If you choose to not get vaccinated and your area runs out of ICU beds to such a degree that people start dying due to lakc of care, then yes, you are partially responsible for their deaths.

> Choosing to go to the beach and drive your car, increasing traffic on the road and contributing to the chance of someone else being in a wreck

The choices you make affect your culpability. Were you tailgating, driving through residential streets, driving an unnecessarily large vehicle, did you let your elderly parent drive or were you texting while driving? Somehow your moral theory seems to end up excusing every possible contributory choice that increases the risks for others.

It is fine to make selfish choices, but you should make them with an attitude that minimizes the risks you place on others. If you don't want to get vaccinated, you should find ways to avoid indoor public spaces, maskless social gatherings and anything else you can do to manage those risks.

Personally, I find ways to minimize driving and when I do drive, I drive carefully and slowly. I think driving is an activity we tend to be unreasonably callous about the risks of. I think society at large should place more responsibility on drivers for the risks they create.

>I don't see how you can honestly use this phrase to describe the worst pandemic since HIV.

I mean, according to CDC's data, it is a very minor illness. Affects very few seriously, and kills even fewer: CDC believes (they obviously don't know for sure) only about 5% of their "total COVID deaths (deaths with COVID), are actually attributed specifically to COVID. As of right now, that would put total deaths from COVID at around 33K, that's over 18 months that we've started tracking. Total deaths from car accidents, yearly, around 36K and rising quickly over the last two years.

I've had it twice, 18 months apart. Yes, it was not nearly as bad as the flu, and definitely not as bad as the antibiotic resistant strep I had picked up at a hospital.

Edit: my 10% number below is definitely wrong, even for CFR. I messed up some numbers.

> I know that's what you believe, it's not what I believe. I believe it is ridiculous and immoral to coerce and force people into medical treatment for a relatively minor illness that others have freely available access to effective vaccines against.

A minor illness??? This is the worse illness that has affected the world since the Spanish flu. It's worse than AIDS, malaria, it even beat tuberculosis in terms of raw people killed in 2020. Calling COVID19 a "minor illness" is simply delusional at this point.

And this death toll was only kept somewhat in check because of the biggest social disruption and curbing of liberties since WW2. If social isolation weren't forced, we would have seen situations like we did in Lombardia in the early days - not 1% death rates, but 10% or more because of overwhelmed hospitals.

> It's worse than AIDS

It's more acute than HIV was, but HIV still has an order magnitude more deaths. I remain hopeful that covid deaths won't reach those levels.

Covid19 killed 1.89 million people worldwide by Jan 1st 2021, according to Our World in Data. HIV killed the most people per annum in ~2004, at 1.7 million worldwide, ~23 years after the first outbreak (1981).

If we can stop Covid19 with vaccinations, lockdwons, contact tracing, then hopefully it will not reach HIV levels of cumulative historical deaths. But otherwise, it would reach the same death toll as HIV did in 40 years in about 12 years like 2020.

And note, HIV was enough to completely change human sexual interactions maybe forever - at least for ~30 years.

> It's worse than AIDS, malaria,

Malaria has killed ~2 million in 2 years. It's actually just around half of Covid but while Covid deaths are slowing, Malaria is steady.

Sure, because Covid has a vaccine that can actually be afforded by most of the population suffering from it. Malaria has been completely eliminated from all rich regions of the world, and it only festers in places that can't afford the vaccine.

I said relatively minor, comparison being to something like smallpox. And certainly compared with the unfounded fearmongering you've written here. There would absolutely not have been 10% death rates! Have unvaccinated hospitalization rates ever gone above even 1%?

Edit: my 10% is definitely wrong, even for CFR. I messed up some numbers.

> There would absolutely not have been 10% death rates.

But that's exactly what the death rates looked like in all regions that didn't impose lockdowns soon enough. The case of Lombardia is perfect - it's one of the richest regions on Earth, and while local hospitals were overwhelmed, it was surrounded by other rich regions that could accept patients. And even so, it had ~10% death rates in the early days of the pandemic, before lockdowns.

They didn't really look like that, it was probably more like 1% and that is quite an outlier.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

A lot of places around the world have had little or no lockdowns or vaccinations and have not seen anything like 10% fatality rate over the population. This is fear mongering.

Oops, you're right - I completely messed up the numbers. 10% is way too much, even for CFR. Still, 1-2% death rates is a huge number.

No problem, hope I can help you sleep a little better tonight :)

>If you choose to dive drunk, you are responsible. If you choose to lie about the the status of your STD testing, you are responsible. If you actively discourage people from taking a safe vaccine, you are responsible. If you choose to go un-masked and unvaccinated when there is significant local spread, you are responsible. I don't beleive the best response to this is vilification or shamming, but that doesn't change the moral truth here.

without trying to talk about vaccination and politics, a recent personal mandate, i'd like to bring something up.

there is a weird change in scope within your example.

You choose to drive drunk and are responsible. Sure, got it. You personally lie about an STD and are responsible. Sure, got it. You convince someone else to not take a vaccine and you are responsible.

Well.. wait a minute. Why does that responsibility fall one actor back?

Why isn't the actor who refuses the vaccine the guilty party?

If we can continue this line of thinking, when does it become OK to blame parents for the birth of murderers?

It occurs to me that liquor companies convince people to drink via advertisement, same as car companies woo potential customers over. And while not as legal as the under endeavors, the STD laden sexual partner certainly convinced their victims to continue.

Why not mention the role of the 'convincers' here, too?

In other words : I think 'moral truth' is kind of bullshit. More like "social truth".

> If you actively discourage people from taking a safe vaccine, you are responsible.

Just jumping in here to reply to this statement... if you're talking about someone expressing their opinion to others that they shouldn't get the vaccine, the person expressing that opinion isn't responsible if the other person decides not to get the vaccine; the other person is the one who is responsible for their own actions and decisions. It's on them to weigh that advice with whatever other advice they are hearing.

I do agree that people are responsible for consequences of driving drunk, or lying about the status of their STD testing.

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