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Comment by grappler | Hacker News Reader

I feel we're jumping the gun a bit by ostracizing antivaxxers when current vaccines don't don't do a whole lot to prevent spread. Vaccine benefits are mostly personal to the recipient, by significantly lowering risk of hospitalization.

With the breakthrough infections observed with Omicron, the justification to enforce vaccination mandates is weaker still.

I know there's work underway to develop new improved vaccines, targeted at more recent variants like delta and omicron. I'm hoping new vaccines will also be demonstrated to significantly lower risk of spreading. Then, I'll feel I can confidently defend measures taken to isolate people who refuse those improved vaccines for the safety of everyone else.

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It doesn't matter, if it's a foot on the wedge in the doorway of the "Being unhealthy costs us all as a society, so we need to have universal monitoring of your daily life for the public good" argument. Never mind if that thing being measured is adherence to a flawed food-pyramid or ineffective vaccines or whatever; compliance is king.

> current vaccines don't don't do a whole lot to prevent spread

But do a hell of a lot to keep people out of the hospital.

> Vaccine benefits are mostly personal to the recipient

Everyone benefits. Ultimately we all pay for healthcare. We are all kicking into the kitty to fund emergency healthcare. Your taxes and insurance payments are used in part to cover hospital costs for others. Everyone in our society helps cover ICU costs for the unfortunate few, so that should we ever be so unfortunate, we’ll have coverage, too.

The unvaccinated are costing an outrageous amount. Won’t even bring up long covid, brain rot, time off work, disease spread.

The unvaccinated want all the benefits of society, without paying all the dues. I don’t think we can afford that. It will break the healthcare systems.

I agree with all that, but the argument for "you can't come into the <public place> unvaccinated" will be a lot stronger when it can be followed by a simple "due to a significant risk you'll infect people".

Look at Israel. They vaccinated themselves out of epidemic twice. Just stop pretending that delta was the same as native virus and everything moves into place.

Their current vaccination levels are too low to stop omicron but they are not dying from that like happened with delta, so they are doing fine.

How many unvaccinated < 50 yr olds do you believe to be in the hospital from Covid (not incidental statistical collection). How many are in the ICU? How does that compare to flu? I'd be much more comfortable if we could see those kinds of obviously desirable comparisons rather than treat the whole thing as a forgone conclusion. Vaccines should not be demanded from the general population to participate in society because it is anti-science without rigorous scientific justification.

They do. You just have to apply enough of them. Just stop pretending that 2 doses are enough to stop delta or omicron and move forward.

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