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Comment by throwaway47292 | Hacker News Reader

I am double vaccinated, pro vax, would get booster if I can, but if this happens in my country I will join the riots. I dont have solution, but if people dont want to get vaccinated they shouldn't be forced, period.

I am afraid this pressure will create people that are against all vaccines, and when we get like 20% of new parents not vaccinating their new lockdown babies (which are a lot, everyone i know who can be pregnant is pregnant), the Pandora's box will open, measles and polio and shit will come crawling back.

I feel we could do more to incentivize people to be less packed, like taxing working from the office and incentivize working from home, or subsidize working longer hours in retail and gyms. And possibly we could do better with masks and more tests, e.g. send families 1 test per week so they can stop the spread quicker.

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I had covid, but have no certificate with PCR test. I had positive home self test. I did not want to ride bus and visit hospital, with 38 degree fever, to get official PCR test. Instead I just self isolated for 2 weeks like an idiot.

They will now force me to take a shot. I have to risk severe alergic reaction.

I am also vaccinated, but Jansen does not count anymore.

Sorry to hear that, but you may overestimate your own risk: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34463744/

At this point, we're talking about the most-tested vaccine in all of the world. Even if your chance of dying is increased by 5x, that's equivalent to about 10 hours of driving a car at average Autobahn speeds.

If you're prepared to take that kind of risk every year, I'd invite you to just go do it.

Good you have better information than my GP!

Edit: allergic reaction would be from high level of antibodies. I recently passed hard form of covid.

Please stop giving medical advices! You are not doctor and you did not even read my post!

send families 1 test per week so they can stop the spread quicker

This is a great idea, and I'm really curious why we don't have something like this, just mail a free mask and a free test to every address once a week, with a form to request more for larger households, or to request that they stop.

The US postal service isn't nearly robust enough to handle this. We saw that with physical unemployment checks last year when nearly everyone became eligible.

Somehow I get junk mail delivered reliably every week. Maybe put the tests and masks in with that, rather than individually addressing and labeling every shipment.

The people not getting vaxed voluntarily are the same ones that would never sign up or take the test

5 tests are 14Eur here, me and my wife test weekly, and our daughter we test every 2-3 days, so we can isolate asap, but none of my neighbours do that. And multiple times people didnt even test with symptoms.

It would cost ~50 euro per family per month, which is quite expensive, but possibly if they use some sort of model to give tests to people with higher probability of getting sick (e.g. if your child was in a school that got N positive tests recently) maybe it can be reduced to 5 euro per family per month.

Somehow I feel this is a missed opportunity to get things a bit better, I dont think people will infect other people on purpose.

The UK has done a really good job with this. Anyone can order 7 tests online for no charge.

https://www.gov.uk/order-coronavirus-rapid-lateral-flow-test...

> e.g. send families 1 test per week so they can stop the spread quicker.

I'm afraid you're missing reality, our kids are getting tested 3 times per week already and still we're in quarantine right now for the second week because an unvaccinated child care assistant has infected half the place and now it's going everywhere.

There is no dialogue or discussion going on anymore. We have two factions in this country by now that don't talk to each other anymore, one of which is despising science, empathy, education and any common sense.

And frankly I'm sick of it by now. Like you I wouldn't force anyone from this group to vaccinate against their will, but I'm completely fine with offering intensive care only for the vaccinated by this point.

German army can build up oxygen tents to offer the others a decent chance to survival. I'm really not interested in saving any Nazi or lunatic against their will.

As far as I know vaccinated people (like myself) can also spread the virus, the vaccination helps only your immune system to combat the disease. So don't blame the unvaccinated for this. But I'm with you in the medical care part, vaccinated people should get priority. But they won't...

By your logic, we should get rid of goalkeepers as well, since all goals in football happen despite them being on the playground.

Sadly lot of people (I don't mean you specifically) are dumb and have black and white thinking.

Yes, vaccinated people can still get sick. But they get sick order of magnitude less often and if they do get sick, they are order of magnitude less likely to need oxygen, hospital or ICU.

Yes, vaccinated people can still spread the virus. But they are order of magnitude less likely to do so, and if they do, they spread smaller amount of the virus over smaller window of time.

Yes, one type of the antibodies (the short-term ones that actively look for virus as opposed to the long-term ones stored in bone marrow that look for your own infected cells that take a while to activate) wanes as time passes but that is property of all vaccines and of "naturally" gained immunity as well - bodies don't want to waste energy actively looking for something it hasn't seen in a while.

But in minds of black-and-white people, this means "vaccines don't work!!!11!!!" and that is just sad.

Oh, and because some people told me that would be "unethical" (and how to prioritize against smokers and motorbikers): It's really not, at least not any less unethical than not getting vaccinated.

These people aren't just fully prepared to still take the risk of dying by Covid up to this day, they also statistically kill 0.01 other people by getting infected.

We put people who kill other people in jail here, and increase their risk of dying by suicide about 10x that way. So far, everyone is fine with that.

I would be fine with unvaxxed people remaining unvaxxed of their own free will if it were also a situation where the law said that anyone who does not get vaccinated during a pandemic when a vaccine is available (and obviously has no underlying medical condition that would put them at risk for a significant injury due to vaccination) while incurring significant medical bills for said pandemic would be liable for all medical bills. The rest of us shouldn't have to pay for premium increases because they're being stupid.

Covid hasn't had an effect on insurance premiums so far. In some plan pools it saves money since treatment isn't overly costly and it has put off expensive electives (though this is offset by the general trend for healthcare costs to rise.) This was reflected in proxies such as the reduced profits of hospital healthcare organizations in the US, like HCA.

> they shouldn't be forced

I was under the impression that you'd just get fined if you don't get your shot. It's not like they are going to take you prisoner and stick a needle in you.

Until when? when the next wave comes and the unvaccinated are 40% instead of 30%, do you think they wont start forcing the needle?

How many people would get the booster? and the next booster after that?

I think its reasonable to assume that every 6 months the unvaccinated group with grow with 5% or so, how long until they become more than the vaccinated?

What will happen when they elect the new government in 2 years

I'm not sure what you mean by "until when?".

> do you think they wont start forcing the needle?

The article is about _fining_ people, i.e. negative monetary incentives. Your reply outlined a bunch of positive monetary incentives. There's probably enough research out there which of the two works better (negative or positive), so I won't get into that. I will say that I think it's quite a stretch to say that either is a step-up to "forcing a needle in you", and that I find it a bit disingenuous to imply that this slippery-slope argument only applies to negative monetary incentives.

>send families 1 test per week so they can stop the spread quicker.

these things are incredibly cheap in Europe. Brother in law tests his kids that are in elementary school twice a week. You pick them up at the pharmacy for like $1.50 a pop.

No one is being forced. They're just being told to stay home if you're not going to be part of the greater good.

If you don't enforce vaccination, you have to ration medical care.

Should someone come in to the hospital presenting with COVID symptoms they get tested. If you pop hot and are unvaccinated, you are sent home with your freedoms, liberties, self reliance, and a pain management pack. People who got vaccinated will have the now heavily unburdened healthcare system dedicated to making them better.

I fully disagree; this matter is not a question of an opinion. There is absolutely not a single convincing reason why shots should not be mandatory.

If people like you will join the riot against it, I will join the riots against the rioters. We finally need Ordnung in society and it cannot be that opinionated people "iT sHoUlD bE nOt MaNdAtOrY bUt I aM PrO VaX, iT iS bEcAuSe oF tHe GrUndGeSeTz" or uneducated should disturb it. Yes, I am a legalist on topics where the collective must work together and not have "opinions".

> I fully disagree; this matter is not a question of an opinion. There is absolutely not a single convincing reason why shots should not be mandatory.

Isn't the the reason of "someone doesn't want it" enough?

Is "I don't wanna" ever a good reason to threaten safety and health of others?

What if I don't want smoking ban in public places? What if I don't want speed limit on public road or giving right of way? What if run a restaurant and don't want food safety laws?

What about [end to end] encryption? By using it we are threatening the safety and health of others. (e.g. the police is slower at solving crime because they don't have access to all private information)

I don't see million of lives lost due to end-to-end encryption, unlike with second-hand smoke, people driving cars like idiots or COVID. Also police mostly doesn't protect and help people and stop crimes, they arrest people after crimes happened. Police being helpful to anyone is mostly a myth.

I mean I generally agree that we should be careful with sweeping "we need X to protect lives" but is global pandemic that killed millions really the case?

But police is total, they would love to prevent crimes before they happen if they could, and would do that at all cost. If only those pesky encryption people stop making this encryption things and we get access to all the data..we will know every crime from domestic abuse to terrorism, we would be even able to predict it, with like 97% accuracy with this 'totally not racist state of the art AI model'.

All jokes aside, of course I agree with you. Including on the police point, but things like the oxy epidemic, or the war on drugs, or the promotion of alcohol, makes me question the "protective" incentives of the state.

If someone says they want to insert something into your body, "I don't wanna" is a good reason to make it not happen. Penises, babies, food, vaccines...

> absolutely not a single convincing reason why shots should not be mandatory.

what if you are wrong?

> There is absolutely not a single convincing reason why shots should not be mandatory.

Human rights are principles which are commonly not given justification. As the US founding fathers said "we hold these truths to be self-evident".

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