Peter Singer on compulsory vaccination
The reason is that we are not good at protecting ourselves against very small risks of disaster. Each time we get into a car, the chance that we will be involved in an accident serious enough to cause injury, if we are not wearing a seat belt, is very small. Nevertheless, given the negligible cost of wearing a belt, a reasonable calculation of one’s own interests shows that it is irrational not to wear one. Car crash survivors on Orlando who were injured because they were not wearing seat belts recognize and regret their irrationality – but only when it is too late, as it always is for those who were injured while sitting on their belts getting them no legal right or monetary compensation.
If you want to understand the legal implications, check with this auto accident lawyer fresno.
We are now seeing a very similar situation with vaccination. Brytney Cobia recently posted on Facebook the following account of her experiences working as a doctor in Birmingham, Alabama:
“I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections. One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late. A few days later when I call time of death, I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same. They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu.’ But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t.”
The same reason justifies making vaccination against COVID-19 compulsory: otherwise, too many people make decisions that they later regret. One would have to be monstrously callous to say: “It’s their own fault, let them die.”
I look forward to Jason Brennan’s rebuttal.
Hey, I do not mind being monstrously callous half as much as I mind the amount of medical care resources being devoted to treating what is now practically an entirely preventable disease. Covid-19 is only as serious as a heart attack for the unvaccinated.
Not “resources being devoted”, but “resources being wasted”.
Isn’t enough that we are having vaccination lotteries
where you can win a $million to get the shots?
The only down-side is that (here in MA),
you are eligible even if you had the
shot before they announced it.
Relying on individuals to make the safer choice doesn’t work reliably. Even responsible people with good intentions make mistakes. Unfortunately, this time around, making it mandatory will probably generate as much defiance as compliance.
Hey, when did we all become Fascists? “Let us force them…”
Might be more “rational” to say, “Let us not waste resources treating them.” But I wonder just whose resources we would be wasting?
Personally, I am in favor of shooting people who drive cars. Certainly they are endangering all of us, by global warming if not just ordinary predictable accidents. And I certainly can’t see wasting resources rushing them to the hospital after they are critically injured.
Coberly,
“…when did we all become Fascists?…”
[Well, Hitler had considered the US his greatest potential ally and so had Henry Ford. But then we had historic allegiances with England and France and we had to side with China against Japan after the Marco Polo Bridge incident. So, shit happens. Like cops, no one likes authority until they need it.]
This,
Seat belts protect against the potential for further injury and are mandatory. So are licenses. OSHA is another necessary regulatory preventative.
An antivaccination stance is legally not a right.
Classical Republicans would argue that “you are free to do as you please under limited government authority as long as those actions do no endanger public health, wellbeing, or the assistance of said limited governmental system(s)”
Being unvaccinated violates two of those conditions.
But then again, Republicans aren’t Republicans anymore.
+ 1
Seat belt laws great comparison for those who talk vaccine freedom.
I wonder whether there would be any way near as much vaccine fear if it came in a pill instead of a needle pumping clear liquid — allows the imagination to fly much more cynical skies. Even if a pill only discouraged dark day dreams for a few percent that would help at least a little. Maybe drawing attention to a possibly different psychological reaction could cause a few of today’s reluctant to think twice.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-covid-vaccine-in-pill-form-to-start-clinical-trial-in-tel-aviv/
Denis
not likely. most of the anti-vax people are that way because their leaders tell them to be.
there is a great propensity among humans not to like doing what they are told. the Right plays on this.
i think there was resistance to seat belts…probably encouraged by car manufacturers. i don’t know if opinions have changed…and if they have, is it because of the law requiring their use, or just the lack of an interest group telling the people their pfreedom is under attack.
the ugliness of some of the anti-anti-vaxers only gets the anti-vaxers backs up.
Denis (cont.)
difference is that wearing a seat belt does not cause great fear… it’s just a question of convenience and not liking mandates.
people whose thinking is no worse than ours, but who have different information, can “reasonably” believe that geting the vaccine is more dangerous than not. you are not going to change their minds by threatening them….not as long as there are 30 million of them.
Coberly,
BTW, you are entirely correct on the transactional analysis. The Fascist semantic deserved an ironic contrast though.
Who do you mean we, kemo sabe?
…said the Cherokee half-breed. Yep, no Nazis here.
Ron
I am trying to find language that will cause less offense. Thing is….in my mind “fascist is not a nationality and apparently not even a wholy owned property of the insane Right.
It is a preference for solving social “problems” with brute force.
What I find ironic is that people who think they are liberal are all to ready to resort to brute force in the name of public safety, or even keeping their taxes low.
Coberly,
Well, understood, but certainly not offended in any way and by the way, you are correct. There is a little Hitler in each of us if we were to have the power to get our own way.
Liberal is a many splintered thing. Classical liberalism is just Libertarians with a free market economy. Most of the world thinks that liberal means unregulated banking; i.e., liberal finance. A sexually liberal person is a libertine.
OTOH, brute force gets a bad rap. Without brute force most of the world’s history would not have happened; no slavery, no American Revolution, no emancipation of slaves, no world wars, no Hitler, no Machiavelli (the one entirely useless character in the long harsh cruel history of man), no Trail of Tears, and Castro and Guevara would have not had their Batista to make them look good. OK, I was needlessly critical of Niccolò who at least did teach us why powerful leaders should not take counsel from a pedophile because they are compulsive liars. Just compare his books to his actual life story to see what I mean. Yet he is the heroic prototype type of liberal republicanism. Go figure. I don’t think that this is what is meant by the pen is mightier than the sword, yet it still rings more true in human history.
In any case, I must soon go clean our pool soon so my wife Kellie can wash away the stench of corporate America at day’s end.
Michael Smith
you illustrate my point. where does your right to “public safety” interfere with my right to “keep your laws off my body”?
my point is that everyone believes in “public safety” AND “personal rights” until they think it is their ox that is about to be gored.
Do not like J.S. Mill anymore?
I am a vaccinated person and in favor of not threatening the unvaccinated in any way, directly or indirectly via their jobs, educations, social mobility. The nation has exceeded the only national target for vaccinations that I am aware of. A little late, but our vaccine posture is adequate and slowly increasing and the natural immunity is also growing. Just let it ride for the rest of the year (at least) is my sense. It is going to be a real mess if a whole bunch of mandates get thrown into this and then – just like Israel plus Pfizer and now Moderna are indicating – the mRNA vaccinated really only have a maybe half a year of reliable immunity.
non sequitur on pfizer and moderna.
pfizer and moderna are both advocating booster shots (because of Delta)…
on the Pfizer boosters..
Study shows Pfizer booster shot has similar side effects to second dose –A preliminary study conducted in Israel found that the Pfizer-BioNTech booster shot causes similar side effects to the second dose… Thirty-one percent reported having side effects, the most common symptom being soreness at the spot where the shot was administered.Roughly 0.4 percent of respondents said they had trouble breathing, and 1 percent said they received medical treatment because of one or more side effects.
fwiw, we’ll start with an anecdote:
An outbreak in a Massachusetts beach town shows the pandemic is ‘nowhere near over.’ – By the Fourth of July, the tourist season in Provincetown, Mass., had built to a prepandemic thrum. Restaurants were booked solid, and snaking lines formed outside dance clubs. There were conga lines, drag brunches and a pervasive, joyous sense of relief. “We really thought we had beat Covid,” said Alex Morse, who arrived this spring as town manager.Mr. Morse didn’t think much of it, five days after the holiday, when the town’s Board of Health logged two new cases of coronavirus. A week later, though, the cluster of cases associated with gatherings in Provincetown was growing by 50 to 100 cases per day. Alongside the numbers was an unsettling fact: Most of the people testing positive were vaccinated.
then we’ll add some hearsay:
Israel’s Director of Public Health Stuns TV Viewers with Statement that 50 Percent of New COVID Cases Are Among Fully Vaccinated
the Director of Public Health Services in Israel told television viewers of the CBS program, Face the Nation on Sunday that 50 percent of new infections in Israel are from fully vaccinated people.
then another anecdote:
Breakthrough COVID cases, while rare, frustrate vaccinated Marylanders – – Christina Van Norman and David Coe had resumed small gatherings – finally – of their fully vaccinated friends in their home in Montgomery County, where coronavirus transmissions were relatively low. The day after the last event, she felt run-down. Two days later she had a fever and body aches, and a rapid test confirmed that the infection wasn’t a seasonal cold but the coronavirus. Her husband soon tested positive and they alerted their guests.“We thought we were vaccinated and safe, and that’s the scary part,” Van Norman said. “I’m not dying, but I’m pretty darn sick and absolutely spreading it to others.” Ultimately 14 of 17 vaccinated people tested positive after the gathering – results that are becoming more common in Maryland and across the country as more people emerge from COVID lockdowns and mask mandates and run headlong into the more contagious and fast-spreading delta variant.
then some more hearsay:
Lessons from Oregon’s July COVID-19 breakthrough report – OPB – One out of every five COVID-19 infections reported in Oregon in July were breakthrough cases; those which were were diagnosed in people who are fully vaccinated, according to the Oregon Health Authority. It’s a discouraging number, but there’s a silver lining: vaccinated people made up just one out of ten COVID-19 deaths. The breakthrough cases that ended in death were almost exclusively in the elderly. COVID-19 cases are surging in Oregon and across the country, fueled by the more contagious, more severe delta variant. Oregon hospitals are quickly reaching capacity, and many counties are seeing more hospitalizations than they were in December before vaccinations were available. The delta variant appears to be two to three times more infectious than other COVID-19 variants.[…] Not all cases are reported, and since breakthrough cases are more likely to be mild, they’re also less likely to be reported.What does that mean? It means that there are probably more breakthrough cases – and more cases, period – of COVID-19 than have been reported. But it also means that the percent of breakthrough cases that result in death is not as high as it appears.
But how many of the new cases in Israel are there? No one thinks that vaccinated people cannot catch Covid.
EMichael, Israel, which is now administering third doses of the Pfizer vaccine, has had 26,755 new cases in the past week…that’s well more than Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt combined..
it appears that Oregon Public Broadcasting has updated that article since i posted an excerpt of it here…it now reads:
About one out of every five COVID-19 infections reported in Oregon in July were breakthrough cases; those which were were diagnosed in people who are fully vaccinated, according to the Oregon Health Authority (OHA).
And 18% of Oregon’s July COVID-19 fatalities were also in fully vaccinated people. That’s a big increase from the June breakthrough report, which showed that vaccinated individuals made up just 8% of COVID-19 cases and 6% of deaths.
“While the July deaths show a higher percentage of vaccinated people have died from COVID-19 than in previous months, it’s too early to tell if this change represents a trend we will see in coming reports,” Dr. Melissa Sutton, the medical director for respiratory viral pathogens at OHA, said in a press release Monday.
https://www.opb.org/article/2021/08/07/covid-19-oregon-cases-delta-variant-vaccine-health-authority/
more anecdotes… i know posting these stories doesn’t change anyone’s mind, but sitting on them will just burn a hole in me, so here goes…
meanwhile, we have almost nothing on less than deadly breakthroughs in most other states..
Run
I really don’t know what J.S.Mill had to say about this. But for what it is worth, I have a hard time agreeing with everything anyone says. Mill and those guys may or may not be smarter than I am, but no one knows everything. Or, logic is easy, facts are hard, but if your facts are wrong, your logic is worthless. Sherlock Holmes said something very similar once…so I suspect the idea is not new.
Lincoln tells a funny story about a case in Illinois, where a man was reported to have been murdered. People were ready to lynch the obvious suspect. Then it turned out the “murdered” man was alive after all. Lincoln said the people were disappointed and even angry not to have a lynching to go to.
coberly
Go read “On Liberty” and we can talk about it. I am not in the teaching mode right now.
as for the non-sequitur: it would be nice to know what sequitur you were thinking of. there are reports that the vaccines are not as effective as we all hoped. my non-scietific guess is that “herd immunity” is likely now not going to happen. what we may end up with is a virus that does not kill vaccinated people, but remains in them and can be contagious to others. so while it may still be wise to get vaccinated, it looks like the case for forcing people to get vaccinated (because they might infect others) is somewhat weaker than we thought. in any case it is going to be harder to convince the unconvinced. may be best not to drive them into the arms of the insane Right.
by the way “not killing the host” is evolutionary good news for the virus. and those viruses will be around mutating further into something perhaps even more dangerous, possibly even to the the vaccinated. but then i don’t know everything.
Run,
I can’t seem to teach anybody anything either.
Ron
I think you are right, as usual. But I know a person who works with dogs, especially those who have bite histories. Mostly they are afraid, and with good (great) re-socializing they can learn not to be afraid, not to bite…. until their owners relapse and start using punishment as their preferred method of making friends.
I am not nearly as talented as that lady, but she has taught me to see the punishment-blindness in myself. And I try to pass on the good news.
Coberly,
This is one of those things about which being right or correct is not at all the same as being right or good. As species go mankind is just an ingénue. We still have a lot to learn and, who knows, we may even evolve as much as T-Rex before the inevitable asteroid wipes out all traces of a once powerful, if not great, civilization.
In any case, please take time to smell the roses while they last and you last. Mankind may save itself eventually or not, but at least Trump is out of the Oafle Office for now.
I need new glasses. I only read this thread because I thought it was about Pete Seeger :<)
Yves Smith has a long piece over at Naked Capitalism that’s relevant to any discussion of vaccine mandates:
Eric Topol Discusses Covid Vaccines Not Meeting Expectations, Breakthrough Cases Sicker
It looks as if conventional wisdom on the Covid vaccines has run head first into some ugly realities. Eric Topol, formerly a “Get vaccinated, problem solved” cheerleader, grapples out loud with troubling data about Covid deaths and breakthrough cases with a serious journalist, David Wallace-Wells of New York Magazine. The short version is that both measures are much worse than expected and the trajectory bodes ill.
Naked Capitalism is where brain cells go to die.
@rjs,
The linked Naked Capitalism was interesting and likely correct just based on the underlying biology, but this is very worrisome –
“…And not only did they actively discourage the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions like masking and social distancing (can’t harsh the mellow of convention sponsors and holiday makers) but they also crippled an already slipshod Covid data gathering system by telling public health officials not to collect data on breakthrough cases among the vaccinated…”
Since the relaxing of of non-pharmaceutical interventions like masking and social distancing in a thinly vaccinated population can explain the death rates without breakthrough cases, then we are flying blind. Given the low scores in basic biology among the population, then bad things will continue to happen. Insufficient data then ties the hands of even the sighted.
Thanks, sort of. Ignorance is bliss, but can be fatal.
Ron,
How does NC’s stuff figure with the link I provided below from statista? Both things cannot be true.
I have been banned from NC for over a decade, as source of pride for me. I called out one on Smith’s friends on a post made about the cost of ACA insurance. Did so because over the course of a couple days, the poster divulged ages of his family and size, income and county.
That allowed me to go on the ACA website and find an insurance policy for the poster. Strangely enough, I found a GOLD plan that was about $4000 less that the poster had stated a bronze plan would cost.
When I went back later and tried to post, I found I had been banned. Then I noticed that every single comment I had made had been erased.
Trust nothing from NC.
EMike,
I am sure that both things can be true – rather easily. My wife and I received our second dose of Pfizer in mid-May and late April, respectively. Since VA got off to a very slow start compared to MA, CT, and NY, then the bulk of the vaccinated have been so for well less than six months. VA is not the worst, but is far from the best on both vaccinations and masks, regardless of mandates. It is the old “you can’t fix stupid” problem. Blacks here were as bad as rednecks until it got so bad in metro areas that most black people had known someone to fall very ill or die. Then it changed. Blacks live closer together than the extreme rednecks. I live where the two intermingle most, the lower cost area at the edge of the suburbs and exurbs in the low country east of Richmond. While the worst idiots were somewhat segregated, then our infection rates kept falling, but with return normal and return to school we are surging again. Some of the states with the highest vaccination rates also had no problem quickly deciding to make masks mandatory for school children. In VA there is a war being waged by the idiots against protecting our children and instructors with either masks or vaccine mandates.
Without specific case data on vaccination status and interval, then there is no way to determine how long that vaccines will be effective or any secondary contributors to lower effectiveness. Realistically breakthrough cases will be minimal for the recently vaccinated, but Covid-19 vaccine has not had the same time for proof as tetanus, so we should expect that there is much that we still do not know about it.
So, my advice is to take every precaution to stay safe.
EMichael:
Maggie Mahar would have done similar in comments. You have a home here.
Nicest compliment I’ve ever had. How is Maggie doing, I seem to remember she had some health issues awhile ago?
Sorry, thought the chart would post.
https://www.statista.com/chart/25489/coronavirus-hospitalizations-and-vaccination-rates-in-us-states/
It posted
EMichael
yes, trust nothing. i was worried about that when i read NC. which is why I said “at least it will be harder to convince the hesitant.”eventually we may kn ow the truth. hate to have that be after we have either forced people and either hurt then or in any case created a backlash that puts them in power to force us.
right now, based entirely on intuition, i would bet that we have lost the “herd immunity” war which we could have won with universal masking and reasonable distancing before the vaccines were ready by denying the virus the opportunity to spread.
Ron
good advice. i have a friend who refuses to think about politics so she can keep her sanity. i try to disengage at least from useless conversations. But I always worry about the rats in the attic.
saved at times by the roses. sometimes by the blackberries, and the needs of home maintenance.
rjs
thanks for your contributions. i try to remain skeptical, but i my heart i believe you are right.,,
at the very least you provide credible enough reasons to remain skeptical of the other side.
J.S. Mill
Mill’s Greatest Happiness Principle (Principle of Utility) establishes that happiness is the ultimate criterion to establish what is moral and what is not, i.e., the ideal moral society is the one where everybody is happy and everybody is free of pain.
Don’t see where that conflicts with anything I have said.
rjs
hang in there. i myself have been posting an absolutely verifiable fact with important implications for going on 20 years without changing anyone’s mind.
your comments regarding incidence of Covid in fully vaccinated people are at least in principle verifiable and have important implications. they at least provide reasonable grounds to refrain from “forcing” vaccination on people. [please, note that I am not objecting to vaccination, i am objecting to “forcing. on the other hand I really hate it when people confuse what i am trying to say with what the anti-vac politicians and the people they fool say.]
i suspect “the CDC has stopped collecting data on breakthrough cases” because they believe people will use the data as another reason to not get vaccinated. they believe (rightly, i think) that vaccination will save lives, and their political instinct is to hide information that will conflict with their (perfectly legitimate) program.
they are probably right, but playing political games put you at the mercy of people who are better at playing political games.
Coberly,
Just because you have the facts and can explain them to someone does not mean that you can understand the facts for someone. Just saying….
According to the long range weather forecasts, Saturday, August 14, will end the succession of 2021 mid-Atlantic heat waves. Until then though we will have a heat index of about 105F each day. Meanwhile the states through which run the Great Divide and all points west are on fire, literally, with no end yet in sight.
At worst Covid-19 variants are not likely to kill more than a quarter of the world’s population before it fades into herd immunity. Climate chaos could kill everyone before it is over. If people can deny the latter, then the former is just a piece of cake. Let them eat cake, as it were.
Ron
I was old before the heat index was invented, so i don’t know what it means. I do understand temperature and humidity though. In any case I find it hard to believe the east coast will see no more heat waves this summer. It’s supposed to be 105 here today and worse tomorrow. The long range forecast doesn’t mention rain, the rivers and lakes and ground are drying up. The fish and birds are dying. But it’s all okay because Biden is going to get OPEC to lower the cost of oil. Oh, and Manchin…what a man…is going to stop the Dems from hurting the nation’s children by spending money on today’s problems. Why not? this has worked for the R’s for the last hundred years or so.
you are right about not understanding the facts for them. But I think we are supposed to try.
I think that if the covid cases stay in the states that won’t wear masks, because it violates their god given pfreedom, either even they will figure it out, or they will cease to be a factor.