I mean, we employ an entire police apparatus to prevent individuals from bringing harm to others by doing what they please. It’s just a matter of perspective.
You are not allowed to do certain stuff in a society, and the society has a variety of enforcement mechanisms to enforce compliance.
This is absolutely false. And that’s as it should be.
The police, and law enforcement more broadly, generally do not prevent crime, rather they investigate and charge after crime has occurred.
As a consequence of that, perhaps, some future crimes may be prevented.
Mandating medical intervention and limitations on those who refuse is idiotic because it’s ham fisted and will obviously radicalise at least some people, for very debatable gains.
I think that for example the law forbidding you from burning plastic trash in your furnace, or running a diesel car without a DPF, can be well classified as "to prevent individuals from bringing harm to others by doing what they please".
The gains in case of covid seem to be to prevent costly impact on healthcare system (non-covid care getting postponed, staff burning out and quitting).
None of these things are being done on the basis of harm. Someone who is vaccinated but has a coronavirus infection is doing more harm than someone who is uninfected and unvaccinated.
Policing people based on an abstract statistical potential to do harm is an unworkable approach to running a society. And has disturbing implications.
Yeah. And if you drive your car into someone and cause an accident that is worse than driving drunk and you should face worse penalties.
Both of those are bad. Negligent driving is also criminal; there is a legal expectation that you are in control of your vehicle. And that is what is being attacked by the law.
The vaccine mandates aren't based on how in control your immune system is over the coronavirus; I won't rehash the natural immunity arguments but as an example they apply here.
And none of this is going to save you from the coronavirus. The evidence is that it is here to stay and we're all going to get it eventually. The vaccines aren't good enough to wipe it out and there is already an impressive number of vaccine escapes being seen. It isn't like an accident where you could go your whole life without being in one.
The vaccine is supposed to lower hospitalization rates. Maybe even it only dampens the numbers. But still, you don't overrun your hospitals to the extent there are no beds for both covid and non-covid patients.
I commend you to support vaccines even when I know
They aren't 100% effective in reducing severe disease, and the effectiveness is going down.
They don't prevent you from becoming infected and they don't prevent you from infecting others. This is what masks and social distancing are for.
I understand your concern. But even if you are convinced a government is your enemy, the vaccine is not that enemy.
Keep in mind that some interest groups were already pushing agaisnt vaccines before coronavirus. There is gain to be had from social unrest.
Aren’t infected people required to quarantine for a period of time? “Preventing both relatively larger and smaller harms, because they are both too large to tolerate,” doesn’t seem contradictory to me. And “not being vaccinated” is a pretty concrete property.
I’m not convinced we, here in Australia anyway, have achieved a balance sufficient to satisfy my particular set of beliefs - as far as they go in this five minute period.
The tetanus vaccine takes up to 5 shots and then still usually doesn't provide lifetime sterilizing immunity. If Pfizer's COVID vaccine takes three doses before sticking, that'd still do better.
Also, none of those other diseases are current pandemics.
