Yes, libertarians are encouraging vaccine hesitancy
From the Brownstone Institute:
Moreover, there appears to be declining confidence that the latest promised “cure” to the disease (mRNA injections) are acting as a cure in any way, shape, or form.
The entire piece is so crazy I can’t even tell what the point is, other than it turns out that the optimal policy for dealing with a pandemic is to . . . do nothing. Surprise! The author is a self-described “Independent investigative journalist”. It seems like Jeffrey Tucker is having trouble finding stuff to publish.
Easier to be free when there aren’t so many other people around.
Freedom and population density are inversely proportional.
Example # 45,342 why all libertarians are total assholes.
The system does not appear to like you anymore. I do look in the trash to approve these comments.
Thank you.
First, redefine words so that you can make a statement.
Never to my knowledge has a vaccine been considered a “cure” in modern English usage. Prevention is normally seen as a preferred alternative to therapeutic treatments. See old adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Vaccines are a preventative measure. Always have been.
No one believes that vaccines mRNA or otherwise will “cure” the pandemic. No sane person ever did believe that.
What we believe is that vaccines against Covid-19, mRNA, adenovirus, or whatever method is used to produce them, have gone through safety trials and efficacy trials and been found safe and effective enough at preventing the worst cases of Covid-19 to allow them to be given to the general public in an emergency. The data gathered since that approval is being (has been, in the case of Pfizer) used to determine if the vaccines will be given full approval. There have been cases where side effects were discovered, and additional cautions given regarding specific vaccines and specific groups of patients. There always are some people who cannot take just any vaccine.
As the virus spreads and mutates, the vaccines are less effective against the variants that didn’t exist when they were being developed. That should not be some huge surprise or difficult to believe either. The statistics still show you are more likely to survive if you have been vaccinated than if you haven’t.
Libertarians or anyone else can refuse to take the vaccines. I will bitch and moan if they use public hospitals to care for them if they catch it, because I am libertarian enough to think they ought to take full responsibility for their own actions, including the cost of medical care they could have avoided with a free vaccine.
I’m vaccinated but understand why a decent percentage of those eligible want to wait. Hopefully there will not be any longer-term negative health impacts from these vaccines, but at least the (2) mRNA represent brand new human medicine, if not exactly brand new technology. But the current situation I think reinforces the caution of many here. Take boosters as probably the prime example. Is this brand new kind of medicine something that you take two doses at the start and then another every half-year, possibly forever? Many people, and particularly those that correctly understand their risk of serious illness to be low, and even moreso those who had COVID in a very mild form already, will sure wait for a few years.
I have mention here before that a serious marketing effort on the J&J vaccine would seem to have merit. I don’t know exactly how you do that without casting some shade on the other vaccines, but if we want to increase the acceptance, then dealing with the unvaccinated as they are makes more sense than dealing with them as we think they really ought to be. Maybe there is simply an irrational distrust of mRNA in particular, but there is a non-mRNA option.
Finally, I would caution about dealing out health-related financial penalties at this time. The old goose and gander problem is what do you do if the longer-term impact of this is notable, like 20% increase in 20 year stroke probability, or fertility issues? “Hey, you took this stuff, the public isn’t paying for your mistake.”
Try not to talk.
The problem is that it is not just their own fate. Because they are catching a highly contagious disease, and when doing so spread it to others, including some who are vaccinated, especially vaccinated with compromised immune systems. Those are the vaccinated who end up in hospitals. Those are the ones who die despite the vaccines being highly effective in keeping most people from getting very sick and out of the hospital. As anyone who has read Atlas Shrugged with a critical eye, all of her heroes & heroines are selfish, sociopathic, assholes, because she was a selfish, sociopathic asshole. Hence the Libertarian strategy of “natural immunity” and “culling the herd.”
“As anyone who has read Atlas Shrugged with a critical eye, all of her heroes & heroines are selfish, sociopathic, assholes, because she was a selfish, sociopathic asshole.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2005/01/big-sister-watching-you-whittaker-chambers/
Somehow, their libertarian thoughts stop at inconveniencing themselves.
Libertarians and anti-vaxxers. Both cults.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2021/10/02/steven-hassan-cult-misinformation-anti-vaxxers-ndwknd-vpx.cnn