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Comment by KiwiJohnno | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I think you are correct in reducing the argument to its basic factors. Yep, its fucked up.

However if we’re going to talk about moral responsibility for vaccine mandates, we also have to consider moral responsibility for non-vaccination leading to spread of a dangerous virus during a pandemic.

If you are going to hold one group responsible for vaccine-related deaths of mandated vaccines, you must also hold the group who refused the vaccine responsible for any deaths of other people who were infected as a result of their vaccine refusal.

Vaccine deaths were real, and very rare. COVID deaths from preventable spread were also real, and much more common. Public policy had to weigh both, not pretend either side of the risk didn’t exist.

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Young people are actually right then in never ever taking any vaccine recommended by public policy ever again. If taking a vaccine is against your personal interest, and nevertheless public policy, that is the consequence.

It is one thing to make a judgement error in the heat of a crisis, it is quite another one to deny afterwards what a huge fuckup it has been.

There was only one category that it made sense to refuse the covid mrna vaccine in hindsight (excluding specific medical conditions), that was if you were over 10 and under 25 AND gave yourself greater than ~1,000 to 1 odds of not catching covid. That's based on the fact that the chance of a young healthy individual having a severe negative outcome from the vaccine was that much less likely than a sever negative reaction from catching covid. So yes in a vacuum you can say that having the mrna covid vaccine when you don't need it is a negative but "don't need' is specifically if you have low odds of catching the disease not low odds of having a bad outcome from the disease. I'd say a preeminently foolish bet by the time the vaccine was actually available.

I suppose you could also argue other categories based on higher or lower ages and who gave themselves lower chances of ever catching covid could technically also fall into that group. You could also argue moral reasons not to get the vaccine but I'd say in any situation where you still expected to get healthcare that detracted from the healthcare of others (i.e when the hospitals were at capacity and your treatment could kill another) would be morally bankrupt.

> I'd say a preeminently foolish bet by the time the vaccine was actually available.

A preeminently foolish bet is to use a vaccine where you don't know anything about medium or longterm effects, for something that doesn't really affect you. If you know anything about science, you know that.

> However if we’re going to talk about moral responsibility for vaccine mandates, we also have to consider moral responsibility for non-vaccination leading to spread of a dangerous virus during a pandemic.

that's all nice and dandy except COVID "vaccines" (remember, they had to change vaccine definition for this very reason) did NOT STOP the spread, they were at best protecting some old people, it was completely pointless for young healthy people to risk their lives by taking them

I remember how the vaccine narration/propaganda went - it will protect you from getting infection, it will protect you from symptoms, it will protect you from getting sick, it will protect you from serious symptoms, it will protect you from hospitalization, it will protect you from death, so now basically all they can claim it will protect you from going to hell and you can go to heaven if you use them

> Vaccine deaths were real, and very rare.

so were COVID deaths in people under 50 unless you have some health condition, extremely rare for people under 20-30, yet they pushed down the throat "vaccinesd" to everyone, not just risk groups, which is why vaccine mandates/passes hurt proper useful vaccines for decades ahead

Vaccines have always been about preventing the spread of the disease and “the definition of vaccines” has not changed.

This is easy to prove. Simply find a high school biology textbook printed before Covid.

Vaccine the word came from vacca for "cow", and cowpox virus being weakened and injected to prevent cowpox.

MRNA is not weakened virus, it's a spike protein in this case.

Or so that's the argument.

Cowpox was used to vaccinate against smallpox. Cowpox is a less severe infection that stimulates the same immune response as smallpox, but it’s not the same virus.

Inoculation is where a weakened pathogen is introduced to create immune resistance against that same pathogen (see inoculation parties).

I remeber that time too. In fact, vaccines slowed spread and also made symptoms easier on those who caught it anyway.

And that is exactly what was promissed to me.

You are just full of it, that is it.

Prior to COVID I seem to remember that the point of a vaccine was so that you didn't get the disease at all. That's where the herd immunity argument comes from. If 85-90% of the herd has immunity (immunity meaning you can't catch it at all) then even the people who can't get the vaccine are protected because the susceptible are too spread out for the infection to spread.

Do you see how this absolutely requires not just a lowered infection rate with lowered severity of infection? You need a less than ~10% chance of infection in the vaccinated/otherwise immune for the math to work. If the chances of infection after vaccination are still 80% then there is still a large reservoir of potential carriers and you don't have herd immunity.

For most of history what people expected out of a vaccine was immunity from infection not still getting infected but with less severity.

Yes some diseases were eradicated that way. Not all of them and we keep vaccinating.

Herd immunity means the disease wont cause epidemic, if it comes from elsewhere. It does not mean that no single person will get the disease if he encounters it.

Notably, flu vaccine did not stopped flu entirely, is the most common yearly vaccine and I really never seen anyone claim it 100% stops flu.

Oh, you made a category error, I think. Flu has variants and they sometimes "predict" which variant to prepare for incorrectly, but as far as I am aware the flu vaccine is very effective against the correct strain.

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