Coronavirus and You - Page 516

On November 22 2021 08:00 BlackJack wrote:
I assume everyone has enough common sense to respect bodily autonomy enough to not take it lightly when Austria threatens to fine or jail people for not getting an injection. So there has to be a strong argument to override the right to bodily autonomy. So here are what I think are the 3 strongest arguments for vaccine mandates and why I don't think they pass muster. If anyone wants to add another argument feel welcome to.

1) Vaccinating the unvaccinated is for their own good
2) The unvaccinated pose a health threat to the vaccinated by infecting them with COVID
3) The unvaccinated pose a health threat to the vaccinated by overwhelming the healthcare system


1) Vaccinating the unvaccinated is for their own good

Obviously by far the weakest of the 3 arguments to the point where I don't think anything even needs to be said here. Overriding someone's bodily autonomy for "their own good" is not something that is done in any developed country as far as I know. We will literally let people die before forcing a medicine/treatment on them as long as they have mental capacity to make decisions for themselves.


2) The unvaccinated pose a health threat to the vaccinated by infecting them with COVID

Let's just set aside the stupidity required to believe that the COVID vaccine protects you from COVID but it doesn't protect you from the unvaccinated. Or the stupidity that the vaccinated need to be protected from a "pandemic of the unvaccinated."

A lot of people here still seem to be buying into this myth that the unvaccinated are preventing us from reaching herd immunity and if we just coerced the last of them to get the vaccine we can be over the pandemic. This is bullshit. I don't think anyone serious scientific organization is still promoting the idea that we can eradicate COVID. They have all switched their messaging to "controlling" COVID. COVID will still continue to exist even if everyone gets vaccinated and we already have real world examples of that. Gibraltar is the "most vaccinated place on earth" with 100% of its population being vaccinated and 40% receiving their "booster" dose, yet they have the highest rate of spread of COVID out of anywhere in Europe right now



But okay, even though COVID can still spread among the fully vaccinated, the unvaccinated can also spread it even more, so there is still an increased risk posed by the unvaccinated that could be reduced if they got vaccinated. So how do we quantify the benefit here? Well according to the CDC COVID tracker the most recent data for the week ended September 4 shows a death rate of 0.74 per 100,000 people among the fully vaccinated. About 7-8 people per million. Now as I said, there's little evidence to assume we could reach 0 COVID deaths among the fully vaccinated even with strict vaccine mandates. So now you're willing to violate people's bodily autonomy to protect some fraction of that 0.74 per 100,000. Meanwhile an equally large number of people would die of the flu every year and nobody thought twice about any preventative measures to protect the vulnerable. The desire to trample personal liberty to protect people from a respiratory virus when everyone here has spent their entire lives sleeping through tens of thousands of respiratory virus deaths every flu season doesn't make their position morally superior, it just makes it arbitrary and hypocritical.

3) The unvaccinated pose a health threat to the unvaccinated by overwhelming the healthcare system

By far the best argument offered. Nobody should go along with hospitals running out of oxygen and people dying on sidewalks waiting to be triaged. However we're now at a place where we are firing HCW who refuse to be vaccinated. We're 2 years into the pandemic now and all those "field hospitals" that cities and hospitals spent millions to erect have long been torn down and never used. It's hard to simultaneously argue that the healthcare system is going to collapse while at the same time firing healthcare workers and tearing down supplemental hospital beds. We've already seen Florida get to the other side of a bad delta wave and their governor was shit talking masks and mandates the whole way through it. It's hard to believe that a state or country that has more of it's population vaccinated than Florida and has a government with better messaging would not be able to make it through a COVID wave without the collapse of their healthcare system. Although hats off to Florida in the way they blitzed out the monoclonal antibody treatment centers - that was quite impressive to see and maybe was a game changer and not something other states or countries could replicate with less competent leadership. I also have very little knowledge on the capabilities of other countries to increase their healthcare capacities. The US currently has a shit ton of travel RNs, RTs, and other healthcare workers that can deploy to hotspots and are compensated quite well. I don't know if countries with single-payer/socialized systems have the ability to increase capacity by just throwing $ at contractors in the same way.

Well according to the CDC COVID tracker the most recent data for the week ended September 4 shows a death rate of 0.74 per 100,000 people among the fully vaccinated

Deaths per 100,000 population: 1.8

On November 22 2021 16:07 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Why are people arguing that the flu comparison is stupid? Quoting BJ:
2019 numbers for Influenza in the US (from CDC)


note - nobody is saying that covid is 'just the flu'. Just that 'covid for the vaccinated population is comparable to flu for a significantly less vaccinated population'. (And please, no comments on how the unvaccinated coviders strain the health care system, that is irrelevant to what I am saying.)

On November 22 2021 17:06 justanothertownie wrote:

Is there such a thing as long-flu? Or why are we only comparing death rates once again?

Well according to the CDC COVID tracker the most recent data for the week ended September 4 shows a death rate of 0.74 per 100,000 people among the fully vaccinated

Deaths per 100,000 population: 1.8

On November 22 2021 10:39 WombaT wrote:

Why do any of that? Least over here services are stretched thin as it is, I imagine we’ll have a pretty big uptake in the coming winter period, especially as uptake of boosters doesn’t seem as enthusiastic as the initial first two shots.

Maybe we’re equipped to handle a surge, maybe not.

Nobody’s bodily autonomy is being violated, least not here. Which is great, people can, for no particularly good reason make the already difficult task of pandemic mitigation harder, with no consequence whatsoever.

It’s honestly not something I care about anymore, just leave people to it and their ridiculous justifications. I have more meaningful restrictions (which I agree with incidentally) as a smoker upon my person than someone who, for whatever reason refuses vaccination.

That’s how it works, and how it should work, I’m not on some high horse saying I should have the freedom to breathe smoke in people’s faces indoors, that would be silly. The anti vax crowd want their cake, and the eating of it too.

For the record Gibraltar has a relatively tiny population and has a ton of tourist throughput, I’d be skeptical of any stats regarding its vaccine uptake vs Covid outcomes on those lines alone.

And again with comparison to the flu man, I mean come on you make plenty of good posts here but you know that’s a bogus point of comparison.

On November 23 2021 00:12 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Honestly I think it's a combination of several factors, where one is the health care system using a perceived crisis as an opportunity. Health care workers (that are not doctors) have been overworked and underpaid for decades now. Now that everybody is aware of Covid, it makes sense to speak loudly about how overworked they are (while the same was equally true for every flu season going back however long you want to).

We've also had a more conservative government for 8 years (until they were ousted in the election 2 months ago), they've also been cutting stuff / going further with new public management creating disdain among health care workers, and now they're threatening with mass resignations.

Thirdly even though our vaccination numbers are fairly good (87.5% double vaccinated above 18 years), that's still 12.5% short of ideal. And while double vaccinated people get hospitalized (and 60% of our hospitalizations were double vaccinated people), the vaccinated people have shorter hospital stays and are like 80 years old on average (45 or something for the non-vaccinated ones).
Fourth hospitalization numbers are likely to keep increasing a bit, as they always lag behind the infection wave. I have a hard time picturing them multiplying 4 times (so they'd still be lower than peak flu season), but I wouldn't be surprised if they rise to double the current numbers.
Fifth, as there are still hardly any restrictions, hospitals are having to deal with covid in addition to other respiratory illnesses. (Last year, the anti-covid restrictions basically made other seasonal respiratory illnesses drop way below the regular numbers. This year, those are back to normal in addition to the covid numbers.)

But yeah, looking at the numbers, there's no question in my mind that an average flu season hits our health care system a lot harder than the current covid wave is hitting it.

On November 23 2021 00:12 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Honestly I think it's a combination of several factors, where one is the health care system using a perceived crisis as an opportunity. Health care workers (that are not doctors) have been overworked and underpaid for decades now. Now that everybody is aware of Covid, it makes sense to speak loudly about how overworked they are (while the same was equally true for every flu season going back however long you want to).

We've also had a more conservative government for 8 years (until they were ousted in the election 2 months ago), they've also been cutting stuff / going further with new public management creating disdain among health care workers, and now they're threatening with mass resignations.

Thirdly even though our vaccination numbers are fairly good (87.5% double vaccinated above 18 years), that's still 12.5% short of ideal. And while double vaccinated people get hospitalized (and 60% of our hospitalizations were double vaccinated people), the vaccinated people have shorter hospital stays and are like 80 years old on average (45 or something for the non-vaccinated ones).
Fourth hospitalization numbers are likely to keep increasing a bit, as they always lag behind the infection wave. I have a hard time picturing them multiplying 4 times (so they'd still be lower than peak flu season), but I wouldn't be surprised if they rise to double the current numbers.
Fifth, as there are still hardly any restrictions, hospitals are having to deal with covid in addition to other respiratory illnesses. (Last year, the anti-covid restrictions basically made other seasonal respiratory illnesses drop way below the regular numbers. This year, those are back to normal in addition to the covid numbers.)

But yeah, looking at the numbers, there's no question in my mind that an average flu season hits our health care system a lot harder than the current covid wave is hitting it.