Comparing it to discrimination based on skin color seems extremely disingenuous.
I don't care if you get vaccinated; but I also recognize that your are making a suboptimal choice, based on available data, if you don't.
I don't care if you get vaccinated; but I also recognize that your are making a suboptimal choice, based on available data, if you don't.
According to you.
Lots of decisions in life involve many factors. Ever get a job offer in a new city with more pay when you love your current job? So many things to consider, so many variables, means there's no "optimal" and universal decision. Your optimal is not someone else's.
In this case there are plenty of factors. Personal ones like:
* Have you already had and recovered from covid giving you far superior immunity than the short-term shot-based immunity?
* Are you likely to encounter covid if you rarely encounter many other humans in a rural location? * Are you someone with high-risk of covid complication or not? That is, are you fit and healthy and young or old or fat or sickly?
* Do you encounter regularly people who are more vulnerable like grandparents or fat people?
Then less personal concerns, like how well you understand pharmaceutical dev. Three brand-spankin' new vaccine technologies with zero long-term safety data. (Sure the news says "PERFECTLY SAFE AND EFFECTIVE!" but we all know we can't know that--but we all have different perceptions of risk and risk tolerances.) Etc. Etc.
So engineer-y to just say, "Yes, I've boiled down the situation, here's the optimal solution."
This one is fair
> * Are you likely to encounter covid if you rarely encounter many other humans in a rural location?
If you never leave your farm ... I don't care. If you tend to mingle with other people even sometimes, I'd already consider it pretty reckless.
> * Are you someone with high-risk of covid complication or not? That is, are you fit and healthy and young or old or fat or sickly?
This one tires me out a bit because it's been a pandemic for a while now, but it's not only yourself you are protecting by getting the shot.
> * Do you encounter regularly people who are more vulnerable like grandparents or fat people?
Again, even if you sometimes encounter vulnerable people, you should go ahead and get the shot. What exactly is the measurement here? "Oh, I cross paths with a maximum of five old people and eight overweight people a month. That's too little to care about."
IMO, all points following your first one are not good reasons to not get the shot.
Regarding the "less personal concerns", how many more shots does the rest need to get for people to stop screaming long-term safety data? Do you honestly believe that only a fraction of the people wanting to see the "long-term studies" have any idea how pharmaceutical developments usually function? What constitutes as long term? How many more times do we need to point out that no vaccine ever had any side-effects on a multi-year scale?
So yes, there may be a couple factors to consider, but most of what you listed shouldn't fly as an actual factor. It may be very engineer-y to say they have analyzed the situation and found the optimal solution, but I 100% understand where they are coming from.
Idk man, I'm tired.
The [dead] comments in reply to yours seem to imply that choosing to refuse a vaccine (without a sound medical reason to do so, e.g allergies) isn't a choice, which is how they — and I assume millions of others — justify the comparison to racism.
It is, of course, ludicrous on its face as traits such as race are in fact truly immutable, whereas a decision whether or not to vaccinate is certainly subject to change up until onset of illness leading to death.
“It is, of course, ludicrous on its face as traits such as race are in fact truly immutable, whereas a decision whether or not to vaccinate is certainly subject to change up until onset of illness leading to death.”
You know, [dead] and all.
Discrimination can only happen based on factors beyond your control. You can't control your skin color. You can't control your gender, sexual preferences, country of origin, etc. either.
Not getting the vaccine is a choice. Choices have consequences.
This logic also dictates further scenarios:
- vaccine not available to everyone? ⇒ yes, distinguishing on vaccination status would be discrimination since you may not have the choice.
- vaccine required or forbidden by law? ⇒ yes, now things get really complicated. Especially if you travel elsewhere with different rules.
What about religious discrimination, since converting to a new religion is possible?
[Ed.: to clarify, "sensible" arguments can be made either way, and I'm not sure it's easily decidable.]