Hacker News Reader

Comment by thematrixturtle | Hacker News Reader

Unpopular opinion here, I suspect, but I'm happy to see COVID vaccination mandates getting rolled back. They made sense last year when we all thought they would have a meaningful impact on transmission, but Omicron has made it pretty clear that they don't. So if somebody can't or just doesn't want to get the shot, meh, not society's problem anymore, just increase their insurance premiums to reflect the higher risk of being hospitalized if/when they catch it.

And for the record, I'm triple vaxxed myself and continue to strongly support mandatory vaccinations where they do clearly make sense, eg. measles.

View on HN

> just increase their insurance premiums to reflect the higher risk of being hospitalized if/when they catch it.

That's usually not possible with universal healthcare.

Singapore has heavily subsidized healthcare, but they've announced that if you're medically eligible for the vaccine, choose not to get it, and end up in the hospital due to COVID, you'll pay the full unsubsidized rates.

It doesn't work in a system where nobody pays. e.g. UK

In NL a you have healthcare by mandatory insurance (and they cannot refuse you), so I think there is room for a rule like this in NL; I think that’s not the case in the UK or other places like ES and PT.

You are opening the door to your insurance require that you become a vegan or increase the premium to unaffordable levels.

Then as you accept the principle, you will be mandated to take other vaccines. Your compliance will be verified by a chip.

"Imagine the compliance": https://nitter.net/loffredojeremy/status/1527521228688445442

It’s not a good plan, but neither did I think the current system in NL is a good plan; I did not vote for the people who got NL healthcare to this point.

"Nobody pays" is an understatement; everybody who is working in the UK or is officially selling/buying[0] a product or service is paying for it.

[0] While technically it's the company who pays VAT to the HMRC, it is the end customer who actually spends that money, so it's just semantics.

You have the same issue with smokers and cancer, obese people and heart attack, drunk/tired/hurried drivers and accidents, drug users and depression, sugar consummers and diabetes, extreme sport hobbyists and traumas, etc.

At some point, half of the population fall under some risk factor that they could avoid, but instead, make society pay for it.

That's the game of universal healthcare.

As a vaccinated French citizen, I'm ok with it. The pros beat the cons.

In the specific case of smokers, it doesn't actually increase health costs. Smokers die younger and often have a relatively short illness before they die. Compare this to someone who lives 95 and requires care in a care-home it's "cheap". You also save on things like pension costs because you don't pay them to dead folk, and income from taxes.

I'm not entirely sure about the numbers on things like obesity, drug use, etc. off-hand.

I agree with you as a matter of principle, so not that it really matters, but people sometimes say "smokers should pay the cost they inflict on society themselves!" and turns out they're not actually inflicting the huge costs people imagine they do.

Interesting point: how can you say "The pros beat the cons"? So far, and more important from the history (one scandal per WHO pandemic declaration, same plot before and ongoing) we have see only evidence of the very contrary: 2021 total mortality was far higher than 2020 one, 2020 with covid, without "vaccines", 2021 with "vaccines".

What evidence you know of the contrary? The À la une of some journal stating that or something more solid?

Beside that, speaking about France did you read the official report https://www.atih.sante.fr/sites/default/files/public/content... ? Did you read constants articles about medical deserts due to neoliberals reforms ?

Long story short: try to compare USA health costs (the highest in the western world) with the lowest mean quality with classic EU PUBLIC and UNIVERSAL health systems the cheapest and the best in mean quality. Than try to draw where the costs came from and more important: from witch pocked money depart to end up in witch other pockets.

> That's the game of universal healthcare

You have only shown arguments to revise implementations of universal healthcare - not any reasonable stance to regulate behaviour (which by the way, is not a novel topic - see seatbelts etc. - and not a trivial one with easy answers).

If you start putting more rule, you get healthcare, but not universal.

That's what the universal stands for.

It's for everybody, no matter the person.

If you are not ok with that, they you don't want universal healthcare, you want something else.

I personnally love universal healthcare, and I'm happy to pay for it. I don't want to have to play a game of chess to live my life in the most likely way to be reimbursed by the system.

It's hardly an unpopular opinion. It just gets shouted down very loudly by the true believers.

Correct! Curious to see how long this story remains unflagged, because flagging of any posts showing errors in official COVID claims tend to get killed very quickly here.

Here are even more popular-but-unpopular opinions (facts).

We did not "all" think vaccines would have a meaningful impact on transmission. Sadly they never had any impact on transmission. A whole bunch of studies have measured the SAR split by vaccine status and there's no difference, that's not something specific to Omicron. Although health authorities claimed they would reduce transmission, they had no scientific basis on which to do so because the trials didn't test transmissibility, or even impact on severe illness or death. They only tested reduction in PCR positivity rates (and only symptomatic, iirc).

People who were already checking the claims of public health authorities against the trial data knew this from day one, which is one reason so many people opted out of the vaccination process: if the vaccines are so great, why are they making unsupported claims with 100% confidence? Why lie?

Sadly the answer seemed to be not for medical reasons, but because public health had become obsessed with total vaccination regardless of need. The means had become the end. Telling people the vaccines reduced transmission manipulated huge numbers of people into taking them, even if they weren't in any risk groups and knew it, just out of a sense of obligation to others. And then telling people vaccines reduced transmission enabled them to implement vaccine mandates by claiming the unvaccinated were dangerous to the vaccinated.

You would probably get less downvotes if you provided some cites for these claims.

Also, Occam's Razor to me indicates that people and governments entirely reasonably seized on vaccines as a way out of the mess last year, no grand conspiracies or intentional manipulation needed.

The citation for most of the claims is the vaccine trial reports themselves. As for not affecting transmission, I'm on my phone so can't give you links right now but just search Google Scholar and you'll find them. It's obvious anyway isn't it, just look at case numbers.

People chased the vaccines because of the promise of effectiveness. That was reasonable. Going further and making up claims with no basis wasn't.

I think it will be the opposite.

We really don't have much proof that vaccines reduced transmission. It could be to some extent but how meaningful was that?

We also know that some governments but not all governments implemented vaccine mandates. For example, the UK was pretty lax on them but Germany was very strict.

Occam's razor indicates that apparently some governments didn't have scientific basis for mandates. The opposite that they really had all scientific proof but somehow hid that from the public sounds like a conspiration theory and does not cut the mustard.

Interesting train of thought

I think it could be good start. Then extend it to things like extreme and regular sports. Maybe any and all alcohol use. Many poisonings. So many ways to save money by limiting access to health care.

We could charge for broken bones regardless of sports, there’s no reason for a person to break a bone under usual living conditions.

Only situation I can think is occupational. But then it should be charged to employer.

>Unpopular opinion here, I suspect, but I'm happy to see COVID vaccination mandates getting rolled back. They made sense last year when we all thought they would have a meaningful impact on transmission, but Omicron has made it pretty clear that they don't.

I've heard it theorized that vaccination makes Omicron spread faster, because being vaccinated reduces symptoms while not reducing the viral load, making it more likely for someone to unknowingly infect others.

> They made sense last year when we all thought they would have a meaningful impact on transmission, but Omicron has made it pretty clear that they don't.

They have a non-zero effect on transmissions, severe symptoms, hospitalizations, and deaths, but don't prevent any of those 100%. Problem is, people hear "they don't work in 100% of cases" but only listen to the "they don't work" part.

To me, "risk of transmission of a deadly disease" should fall under the category of workplace hazards, like falling metal beams and air quality. Employers are allowed to mandate helmets and prohibit smoking, so they should be allowed to mandate other things that reduce the risk of their employees encountering other workplace hazards.

Since vaccination does entail a substantial reduction of serious illness - if it doesn’t reduce transmission it shouldn’t be mandated? I don’t follow

Regular cardio exercise or cessation of smoking has an even more dramatic impact on health outcomes. Should those be mandated?

(I’m pro-choice here and elsewhere. I have chosen to get three jabs, because I think the vaccine’s benefits to the individual far outweigh the risks.)

Since actions may imply tradeoffs, you cannot force an action also forcing the tradeoffs - which are to be evaluated subjectively, not by any third party.

To decide that everyone is mandated to eat vegetables, the actor (decisor) should be a perfect, ideal one, knowing much more than we actually know.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com