Hacker News Reader

Comment by cedws | Hacker News Reader

For the record, this comment is not arguing against vaccines or their veracity, there seems to have been confusion about that. I am specifically arguing against vaccine mandates.

View on HN

If someone refuses a vaccine and then passes on a virus to someone else, who dies, isn't that morally equivalent to "forcing" a vaccine on someone, who then dies? Your argument seems to be "people who choose to put others at risk, should be prevented from doing so." This seems like a much stronger argument in favor of requiring unvaccinated people to stay home rather than putting others at risk?

Every death is a tragedy. Harm to one person is not fungible with benefit to another. You can't subtract one from five to get four net lives saved, but you can say that five is more than one. If someone pulls the lever then they have murdered one person and saved five. If someone wants to pull it and I stop them, haven't I murdered five people and saved one?

No, it's not morally equivalent, as one of these is very obviously unintentional and a result of simply living one's normal life, and the other is neither of those things.

It's also somewhat irrelevant since the vaccines do not prevent transmission. At best they lower the chance to some degree and now you're in the weeds of trying to measure something that's too multivariate to measure.

Scientists and the government were also unaware of vaccine side effects. These vaccine injuries and deaths were also unintentional.

"Living one's normal life" seems to unreasonably privilege the status quo. I am sure many drunk drivers also felt they were simply living their normal lives, before drunk driving was illegal. The definition of "normal life" changed because it needed to. When there's a global pandemic on, it needs to include vaccinations.

"Herd immunity is too multivariate to measure" seems like a very strong claim. Do you have a source for that?

Except COVID "vaccines" did not prevent infecting yourself or someone else, are there still people believing this nonsense? This "vaccine" at best protects you if you are old at risk and it's not good even at doing that comparable with those flu "vaccines".

Not sure why you're using quotes, it IS a legitimate vaccine. Care to elaborate?

The definition of the word "vaccine" was literally changed during the pandemic so the mRNA injections could fit in : https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/word-of-the-year-20...

Some people don't agree they should be called "vaccine", in the traditional sense.

It's gene therapy. Straight from the mouth of a member of the board of directors of Bayer: https://rumble.com/v210gyq-executive-big-pharma-bayer-stefan...?

Here's a better source, with video:

https://x.com/coenvermeeren/status/1537751313932599296

There's also a "Fact Check" article from Routers that says it is a "false allegation that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are a form of gene therapy":

https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/bayer-executives-...

But the same article has the following quote from the above video, from Bayer's executive Stefan Oelrich:

> “Ultimately the mRNA vaccines are an example for that cell and gene therapy. I always like to say, if we had surveyed two years ago in the public, ‘would you be willing to take gene or cell therapy and inject it into your body?,’ we would have probably had a 95% refusal rate. I think this pandemic has also opened many people’s eyes to innovation in the way that was maybe not possible before.”

So it seems Bayer (or at least, Stefan Oelrich from Bayer), indeed classifies the mRNA vaccines as gene therapy.

Fact checks are basically validation of the conspiracy theory by now.

> If someone refuses a vaccine and then passes on a virus to someone else, who dies

Why wasn't that other person vaccinated?

Some people can't take vaccines because of allergic reactions. Other people have weakened immune systems and so the effect of vaccines is low.

For those people, it's the group that protects them. But of course you always have selfish people that only care about themselves. It was nice to see the amount of selfish people was pretty low in my region, and we got about a 80% vaccination rate.

If the pandemic had been deadlier and even more infectious like measles or smallpox were, would you still be against mandates? Surely there is a scenario like airborne Ebola or 28 days Later Rage virus that would justify mandates.

I would also be against vaccine mandate if we also had a law where if I could prove you infected me, that would count as assault with a deadly weapon, and all the other laws that determine what I could do when someone assaults me with a deadly weapon would apply.

In Belgium, the polio vaccine is mandatory, and rightly so.

I'm willing to bet that in the next 20 years, some kid in the western world will suffer the consequences of polio, because of the anti-vax lunatics.

The polio vaccine is much older and as far as I could find has never had a death attributed to it. COVID vaccines are newer, and their safety profile was not fully understood when they were rolled out.

Therefore the COVID vaccines were also not mandatory.

Unless you wanted to keep your job in the medical field or education or had to do lots of travel.

If I remember correctly, it was a pandemic. So yes, everybody contributed, either by getting vaccinated or staying home, your choice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com