Originally posted by Cow Poke
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Tennessee GOP goes anti-vax
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I don't need the government to "remind" me about anything. I don't pay taxes to be "reminded". Responsible, independent citizens can think for themselves.
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
So, the debate in the "my body my choice" argument is always that it's about a woman and her doctor.
My doctor tells me not to get the vaccine - yet.
But I should yield to public pressure "for the good of the people" against the advice of my own doctor?
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Originally posted by CivilDiscourse View PostOh, I just pointed out that oft-used argument that is used with the "my body my choice" crowd on abortion, where bodily integrity is sacrosanct.
I do not personally endorse the "my body my choice" / bodily integrity arguments. You won't find me making those arguments on abortion, nor on vaccinations.
I support compulsory vaccinations (with exceptions for severe medical conditions, e.g. extreme allergies).
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
So, the debate in the "my body my choice" argument is always that it's about a woman and her doctor.
My doctor tells me not to get the vaccine - yet.
But I should yield to public pressure "for the good of the people" against the advice of my own doctor?
So, without arbitrarily weighing in on your specific case, assuming that is what is driving a doctor's advice, then it is important to note that a person that has had Covid already does most likely have some immunity - maybe even as much as the J&J vaccine confers. So such a person is NOT necessarily part of the 'unvaccinated' population in that they have been 'vaccinated' as it were by the virus itself.
OTOH, covid acquired immunity is spotty. And the vaccine immunity coupled with a naturally acquired immunity is typically even stronger. So, there are good reasons for people that have had covid to get vaccinated in spite of the fact they may have some naturally acquired immunity.Last edited by oxmixmudd; 07-21-2021, 01:54 PM.
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Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
I'm not sure that changes the content or correctness of my reply to it. Without debating whether the analogy applies in the abortion debate, I think it is very clear it does NOT apply in the 'everyone should get vaccinated' debate.
My doctor tells me not to get the vaccine - yet.
But I should yield to public pressure "for the good of the people" against the advice of my own doctor?
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Originally posted by CivilDiscourse View Post
Oh, I just pointed out that oft-used argument that is used with the "my body my choice" crowd on abortion, where bodily integrity is sacrosanct.
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Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
Analogies need to match the system they are applied to.
There is a difference between cutting an integral and critical part of an individuals body out of them in a way that will impact their lives from that point forward, and requiring a vaccination of a population.
But we can overgeneralize and say that getting a vaccine is 'saving lives' and giving a kidney is 'saving a life' and say that, apart from singular and plural, it is 'the same' - we could also ignore the massive difference in risk and potential consequence and say 'giving a kidney has risk' and 'taking a vaccine has risk' and claim they are also the same.
But the truth is all risk is not the same. And the truth is the cost of saving a life is not all the same either. And further - the impact of the choice is not the same, even in type. And I think this bears emphasis.
My choice to give another person a kidney is one person saving another person (or not).
My choice to get a vaccine is participating in a group effort that will save tens of thousands of lives at least (or not).
The risk of giving another person a kidney is relatively high, both to myself and the other person, but the risk to the other person is 100% fatality.
The risk wrt a vaccine is not only very low for an individual, it is much more complex that that of giving a kidney in that the risk is to an entire population, both in terms of a large percentage choosing not to get the vaccine, and in terms of the tens of thousands that will die because a sizable percentage chose not to get the vaccine. It doesn't even make sense to try to characterize the problem in terms of individual risk because the risk to the vaccinated person is very, very low, and determining the effect of not getting the vaccine on specific individuals is nearly impossible, or perhaps not even meaningful in that the dose of virus that kills someone may accumulate from exposure to virus originating in multiple sources.
But in terms of populations, a large percentage not getting the vaccine might save 10 lives, but at the very same time it will cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives, and injure (via long terms covid side effects) even more. Such ratios (e.g. 10 to 10,000) are normally persuasive as most people have some form of conscience that would drive them to feel a moral obligation to take that risk for the sake of all those that will die otherwise.
So - what analogy might be appropriate then? I think being at war will work. In wartime the defending county's survival as a population is often at stake. And in wartime, even a government like ours has the right to compel individuals to take even sometimes mortal risk on behalf of those around them. Getting a vaccine is nowhere near the sort of risk associated with being forced to hike into enemy territory rifle in hand and fight for the folks back home. So it seems a small price to pay for the welfare of those around us.
On a more generalized vector, people making flawed associations or implications (another means of mapping one system to another) has a very great deal to do with why we are so polarized as a nation right now. We each simplify extremely complex problems to very different and only partially equivalent alternate representations and then draw critical conclusion from the alternate system instead of the real system it models. Usually these simplified models leave out different critical components that drive different and often incompatible conclusions.
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Originally posted by CivilDiscourse View Post
I remember the oft-used example for bodily integrity:
If you were on trial and found guilty of injuring someone, and that someone NEEDS a kidney, and you were a perfect match, the court STILL couldn't force you to give that person a kidney.
There is a difference between cutting an integral and critical part of an individuals body out of them in a way that will impact their lives from that point forward, and requiring a vaccination of a population.
But we can overgeneralize and say that getting a vaccine is 'saving lives' and giving a kidney is 'saving a life' and say that, apart from singular and plural, it is 'the same' - we could also ignore the massive difference in risk and potential consequence and say 'giving a kidney has risk' and 'taking a vaccine has risk' and claim they are also the same.
But the truth is all risk is not the same. And the truth is the cost of saving a life is not all the same either. And further - the impact of the choice is not the same, even in type. And I think this bears emphasis.
My choice to give another person a kidney is one person saving another person (or not).
My choice to get a vaccine is participating in a group effort that will save tens of thousands of lives at least (or not).
The risk of giving another person a kidney is relatively high, both to myself and the other person, but the risk to the other person is 100% fatality.
The risk wrt a vaccine is not only very low for an individual, it is much more complex that that of giving a kidney in that the risk is to an entire population, both in terms of a large percentage choosing not to get the vaccine, and in terms of the tens of thousands that will die because a sizable percentage chose not to get the vaccine. It doesn't even make sense to try to characterize the problem in terms of individual risk because the risk to the vaccinated person is very, very low, and determining the effect of not getting the vaccine on specific individuals is nearly impossible, or perhaps not even meaningful in that the dose of virus that kills someone may accumulate from exposure to virus originating in multiple sources.
But in terms of populations, a large percentage not getting the vaccine might save 10 lives, but at the very same time it will cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives, and injure (via long terms covid side effects) even more. Such ratios (e.g. 10 to 10,000) are normally persuasive as most people have some form of conscience that would drive them to feel a moral obligation to take that risk for the sake of all those that will die otherwise.
So - what analogy might be appropriate then? I think being at war will work. In wartime the defending county's survival as a population is often at stake. And in wartime, even a government like ours has the right to compel individuals to take even sometimes mortal risk on behalf of those around them. Getting a vaccine is nowhere near the sort of risk associated with being forced to hike into enemy territory rifle in hand and fight for the folks back home. So it seems a small price to pay for the welfare of those around us.
On a more generalized vector, people making flawed associations or implications (another means of mapping one system to another) has a very great deal to do with why we are so polarized as a nation right now. We each simplify extremely complex problems to very different and only partially equivalent alternate representations and then draw critical conclusion from the alternate system instead of the real system it models. Usually these simplified models leave out different critical components that drive different and often incompatible conclusions.
Last edited by oxmixmudd; 07-21-2021, 11:03 AM.
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Originally posted by rogue06 View PostFWIU, pretty much all of the fatalities here now are among the unvaccinated. Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated. I think the statistic I saw was 99.2%. That could change if new strains arise that are resistant to the vaccines available.
A good indicator of this is the fact that the immune systems of people who had SARS (the original, 17 years ago), recognize SARS-CoV-2 as being similar enough to what they fought that they produce effective antibodies against it. We're talking RADICAL changes would be needed to get around vaccine-induced and natural immunity. And when viruses change that much they usually render themselves dead, or changed so much that they have to find a new host to infect.
There's also a decent amount of precedent to indicate that more pathogenic things like this tend toward evolving to less dangerous viruses that simply spread more easily but cause less death (we actually seem to be seeing this in real time - covid's symptoms have shifted away from the more prominent ones and more toward just simple cold-like symptoms, and there's indications delta is a probably a bit less deadly for example).Last edited by Gondwanaland; 07-21-2021, 07:56 AM.
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Originally posted by tabibito View Post
It would be interesting to see the comparison rates for people who have been vaccinated against those who haven't.
Percentage of vaccinated people contracting the virus who need hospitalisation or die.
compared with
Percentage of unvaccinated people contracting the virus who need hospitalisation or die.
If vaccination has any beneficial effect, the vaccinated group should be showing much lower percentages.
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Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
Good for them. Nobody should be coerced into getting a risky experimental medication that is still considered suitable only for emergency use. Perhaps we can revisit this topic again in a few years after testing is completed for the China flu vaccines.
As for other vaccines, that's between you and your doctor, and the government should keeps its nose out of our personal affairs.
This from a history of vaccinating kids at school is interesting
There is a long history associated with the use of school-located vaccination (SLV) in the United States. SLV was first implemented in the mid and late 1800s in the US when public health officials used the schools as sites for vaccination against smallpox; Massachusetts reportedly began the practice as early as 1850.1 In the mid-1950s, the inactivated polio vaccine underwent vaccine trials using more than 1.3 million elementary school children in 1954, and rubella vaccine was administered in schools in the late 1960s. Schools have long been recognized as a great way to access many school-aged children at one time for vaccination campaigns. Immunization in the schools has recently been studied more systematically in some communities in the United States as a means to increase rates of influenza vaccination each year.
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Originally posted by tabibito View PostIt would be interesting to see the comparison rates for people who have been vaccinated against those who haven't.
Percentage of vaccinated people contracting the virus who need hospitalisation or die.
compared with
Percentage of unvaccinated people contracting the virus who need hospitalisation or die.
If vaccination has any beneficial effect, the vaccinated group should be showing much lower percentages.
Crunching those numbers with some math finds it implies that if a person takes the vaccine it reduces their chances of being hospitalized with covid by around 70% compared to a non-vaccinated person.
A confounding factor is that the elderly are known to be vastly more likely to get seriously ill or die from covid than children, that is why the elderly are being vaccinated first and why most countries don't seem sure if they'll ever bother to vaccinate children for covid. So the raw statistics would tend to look far more unfavorable to the vaccines than if you did a properly controlled sample for age etc, as the vaccine is trying to give protection to the most-at-risk groups. So, actually, the vaccines would be doing far better than the above 70% reduction in hospital admissions if that were accounted for.
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