Wartime draft vs vaccine mandate

[Loren Pechtel]

And Covid is approaching a lifetime worth of DUI deaths--given the apparent undercounting it's probably already passed that point.

I missed this point before. Say what?

In Australia, the road toll is at least 1,000 people per year. Around a third of those deaths can be attributed to drink driving accidents. Now I don't know what a 'lifetime' of DUI deaths is (70 years worth)? About 1,500 have died from COVID in Australia, whereas a 'lifetime' of the DUI road toll would be more than 25,000 deaths.

I was looking at the US.

Covid deaths: 724k. DUI deaths (2019) 10,142. That's 71.4 years of DUI deaths compared to an average lifespan of 78.79 years.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You are so callous I can't engage any further until I've calmed down.

In our eyes you are the callous one, wanting the freedom to go around engaging in biological warfare. You are trying to cross not only the lethal force threshold, but the WMD threshold.

Holy shit, I missed this too. "Biological warfare". WMDs! Saints preserve us!

Sorry, but that's what the covidiots are engaging in. Deliberate attempts to infect as many as possible with a level 3 biological agent.

 

[laughing dog]

Thank you for the feedback. Either Toni will supply her answer or she will not.

I would not stoop to answer your irrelevant question.

 

[Metaphor]

Your analogy would work if people knew they were infected or going to infect someone. But they don't. Which is why it doesn't work. The damage has already happened when the person has contracted covid, which is why that is the car crash. To me your analogy is telling people, that car crashes are only bad when people are in car crashes. The bad part has already happened. If you want to prevent car crashes you discourage the unnecessarily risky behavior that tends to lead to car crashes.

Vaccinated people are even less likely to know they've got COVID if they get it! They won't be looking out for the symptoms and they're less likely to experience the symptoms.

Of course, the whole conversation might be different if vaccination provided 100% immunity (though I suspect even then, the pro-mandate people would still feel the need to punish people who did not vaccinate).

Except that people who are unvaccinated DO pose a greater risk of contracting and spreading the virus. THIS is why your analogy doesn't work. THIS is what I have told you from the beginning. You refuse to acknowledge that choosing to go unvaccinated in public is unnecessarily risky behavior.

But you've simply decided that it is 'unnecessarily risky behaviour'. The calculation you've made for yourself is that it is worth it to get the vaccine for yourself. You have discounted the price people are paying (getting an unwanted medical procedure that is against their conscience) completely.

People get sick all the time and they assume that they just have a cold until their symptoms become more distinctive so they go to work and attend town council meetings and sneeze on the produce in the grocery store because they "just have a cold" and they need to do their business. But they are wrong and they have already caused damage in society.

Right...and do we put those people under pre-emptive house arrest?

Except that it is. People who choose to be drunk permanently should have their driver's licenses taken away. If they continue to drive despite their choice to be drunk permanently, they should be punished by the authorities to discourage that behavior in others. What's the problem here?

The problem is that unvaxxed people are not permanently drunk. In fact, they are probably never going to get drunk.

But it doesn't work that way in the real world. People are infecting others unintentionally and unknowingly. That is how the disease spreads. The solution to your analogy is to punish people who are deliberately spreading the virus knowingly. But that isn't a solution that actually solves anything. The damage is already done. I mean sure, we should hunnish that behavior too, and that is what we do, because people who drive drunk get one Driving intoxicated charge and people who drive drunk and crash get the charge for Driving intoxicated and multiple other charges for the damage they do. That's why crashing is equivalent to getting Covid. And the Driving Intoxicated is the risky behavior of public unvacinatedness.

People who are vaccinated will infect others unknowingly and unintentionally. Indeed, it seems to me they'd be far less likely to know they've got COVID when they get it.

But, even if I did agree that extra restrictions are necessary for the unvaccinated (I don't), what makes you think indefinite house arrest is a proportionate response?

This is a weird red herring. There is a thing called nuance and measured response.

I don't think indefinite house arrest is 'measured'.

The test doesn't tell us if you are still contagious.

If it is true that "natural immunity" only protects you from the strain you contracted the first time, but it is known that the vaccine protects against a broader variety of variants then this documentation also becomes a meaningless indication of safety.

The immunity is not meaningless. People who caught Delta and survived it are much better protected against it than vaxxed people.

Have you ever met someone who drives faster than the speed limit? I have.

So, you expect there to be an appreciable number of people who will purposely break house arrest to get COVID, just to no longer be subject to permanent house arrest? Why not have tracker devices? The South Australian government has already trialled it.

Regardless, it is counterproductive to the purpose and intent of the vaccine mandate if there is an option that rewards the reckless behavior that the mandate aims to eliminate.

The mandate is trying to eliminate the act of people going out to deliberately try and contract COVID? You must hang out in dodgier circles than I do.

 

[Metaphor]

Thank you for the feedback. Either Toni will supply her answer or she will not.

I would not stoop to answer your irrelevant question.

Well, I didn't ask you to.

 

[Metaphor]

Holy shit, I missed this too. "Biological warfare". WMDs! Saints preserve us!

Sorry, but that's what the covidiots are engaging in. Deliberate attempts to infect as many as possible with a level 3 biological agent.

You have a strange circle of friends, Loren.

 

[Metaphor]

And Covid is approaching a lifetime worth of DUI deaths--given the apparent undercounting it's probably already passed that point.

I missed this point before. Say what?

In Australia, the road toll is at least 1,000 people per year. Around a third of those deaths can be attributed to drink driving accidents. Now I don't know what a 'lifetime' of DUI deaths is (70 years worth)? About 1,500 have died from COVID in Australia, whereas a 'lifetime' of the DUI road toll would be more than 25,000 deaths.

I was looking at the US.

Covid deaths: 724k. DUI deaths (2019) 10,142. That's 71.4 years of DUI deaths compared to an average lifespan of 78.79 years.

The number of COVID deaths will presumably slow down when the good citizens are double vaxxed and the refuseniks are separated from society indefinitely. Perhaps in some kind of camp.

 

[Metaphor]

Novel infections with high transmissibility tend to hit everybody eventually. Look at what happened to the New World.

So, you are proposing that one hundred percent of the world population will become infected with a covid strain? What's the point of a vaccine?

Note that even this will still be an undercount, just not as bad a one. A few places with lockdowns and little Covid saw the expected results: A lower death rate. Most places saw a substantially increased death rate.

And there aren't going to be a lot of deaths where you're diagnosed with Covid but it didn't play a role in your death.

How do you know?

If you're already severely weakened by something else Covid is generally going to finish you off. And note that other than trauma, the things that get you to the hospital to die there are mostly things that Covid can cause. There will be some trauma cases that don't make it, but the numbers will be small. (And note that trauma can be caused by Covid--a lack of oxygen combined with a situation where you will be harmed if you don't do the right thing. Say, going down stairs.)

And, who has done this forensic accounting? What source has told you that everyone or almost everyone that dies with COVID died from it?

I was talking about the more general case. The libertarian approach can't handle public safety. Covid is simply one such example--the harm to any given individual from risky behavior by any other given individual is too low to handle by compensation. It has to be handled at the population level.

How about a quasi-libertarian approach? Those that are reckless about Covid are fined enough to pay the costs (including compensation for deaths, disability) incurred by those who are careful. Oops--I rather suspect the Covidiots go bankrupt.

I'm not a libertarian so I don't have an ideological preference for a 'libertarian' approach. But I do have an aversion to indefinite house arrest for a minority of the population who refuse to have a particular medical procedure.

 

[Metaphor]

A personal story

My brother is an anti-vaxxer. He refuses to get the vaccine and ticks every COVID conspiracy theory box out there. I'm not going to list them all but there was some I hadn't heard of and had to look up afterwards.

I have spoken with my brother and pleaded with him to get vaccinated. I have explained why, even if some people died from getting the vaccine (eight people in Australia died from complications brought on by the AstraZeneca jab), his medical history and age made a non-AZ jab a much lower risk choice for himself than not getting it.

And one thing that has not helped is the spectre of a vaccine mandate. One thing that has not helped to persuade him is the government telling him he has to do it or they will make his life miserable.

And I do not believe that it is a proportionate or measured response to put my brother under indefinite house arrest, in a community that is over 80% vaccinated and will probably reach 90%. It is not proportionate. It is not measured. It is a sadistic vengeance game.

 

[laughing dog]

My brother is an anti-vaxxer. He refuses to get the vaccine and ticks every COVID conspiracy theory box out there. I'm not going to list them all but there was some I hadn't heard of and had to look up afterwards.

I have spoken with my brother and pleaded with him to get vaccinated. I have explained why, even if some people died from getting the vaccine (eight people in Australia died from complications brought on by the AstraZeneca jab), his medical history and age made a non-AZ jab a much lower risk choice for himself than not getting it.

And one thing that has not helped is the spectre of a vaccine mandate. One thing that has not helped to persuade him is the government telling him he has to do it or they will make his life miserable.

And I do not believe that it is a proportionate or measured response to put my brother under indefinite house arrest, in a community that is over 80% vaccinated and will probably reach 90%. It is not proportionate. It is not measured. It is a sadistic vengeance game.

Interesting policy conclusion - let potential spreaders of a deadly disease alone because doing something might inconvenience them.

 

[Metaphor]

My brother is an anti-vaxxer. He refuses to get the vaccine and ticks every COVID conspiracy theory box out there. I'm not going to list them all but there was some I hadn't heard of and had to look up afterwards.

I have spoken with my brother and pleaded with him to get vaccinated. I have explained why, even if some people died from getting the vaccine (eight people in Australia died from complications brought on by the AstraZeneca jab), his medical history and age made a non-AZ jab a much lower risk choice for himself than not getting it.

And one thing that has not helped is the spectre of a vaccine mandate. One thing that has not helped to persuade him is the government telling him he has to do it or they will make his life miserable.

And I do not believe that it is a proportionate or measured response to put my brother under indefinite house arrest, in a community that is over 80% vaccinated and will probably reach 90%. It is not proportionate. It is not measured. It is a sadistic vengeance game.

Interesting policy conclusion - let potential spreaders of a deadly disease alone because doing something might inconvenience them.

Yes, indefinite house arrest is something might inconvenience people. It isn't strong enough. I think execution is best.

 

[laughing dog]

Yes, indefinite house arrest is something might inconvenience people. It isn't strong enough. I think execution is best.

Sure Jan. Using your "thinking", keeping drunk drivers who do not harm anyone off the road is a sadistic vengeance game. Totally brilliant.

 

[Politesse]

A very strange notion of policy/law, letting 10% of people willfully break it as long as 90% are following it. Who died to make your brother Pope? And how many more is he willing to kill?

 

[Metaphor]

A very strange notion of policy/law, letting 10% of people willfully break it as long as 90% are following it.

What a strange sentence. My policy is 'do not place unvaccinated people under indefinite house arrest'. People leaving their house if they are not under house arrest are not willingly breaking that policy.

Who died to make your brother Pope? And how many more is he willing to kill?

Ah, I can see you have now traded away any pretense of reason. My brother has killed nobody.

 

[Metaphor]

Yes, indefinite house arrest is something might inconvenience people. It isn't strong enough. I think execution is best.

Sure Jan. Using your "thinking", keeping drunk drivers who do not harm anyone off the road is a sadistic vengeance game. Totally brilliant.

No, that is not my "thinking". My thinking is that you should forbid people who are not drunk from driving, just because you think there is a chance they will get drunk and drive in the future.

 

[Politesse]

A very strange notion of policy/law, letting 10% of people willfully break it as long as 90% are following it.

What a strange sentence. My policy is 'do not place unvaccinated people under indefinite house arrest'. People leaving their house if they are not under house arrest are not willingly breaking that policy.

Who died to make your brother Pope? And how many more is he willing to kill?

Ah, I can see you have now traded away any pretense of reason. My brother has killed nobody.

No, he merely demands the right to risk other people's lives for his vanity.

 

[Politesse]

No, that is not my "thinking". My thinking is that you should forbid people who are not drunk from driving, just because you think there is a chance they will get drunk and drive in the future.

If the rule is "you may not drive if you've had three beers, whether or not you think you are drunk", the analogy is apt.

 

[Metaphor]

No, that is not my "thinking". My thinking is that you should forbid people who are not drunk from driving, just because you think there is a chance they will get drunk and drive in the future.

If the rule is "you may not drive if you've had three beers, whether or not you think you are drunk", the analogy is apt.

Well, no drink driving rules in the world are like that, as far as I know.

 

[Metaphor]

What a strange sentence. My policy is 'do not place unvaccinated people under indefinite house arrest'. People leaving their house if they are not under house arrest are not willingly breaking that policy.



Ah, I can see you have now traded away any pretense of reason. My brother has killed nobody.

No, he merely demands the right to risk other people's lives for his vanity.

No, he has not made that demand.

You, however, appear to demand the right to place people under indefinite house arrest because they do not want to undergo a particular medical procedure. You certainly love the force of the US State when you deem it benefits you, even if you're in Chochenyo Territory.

 

[Metaphor]

As always, posting to this board has enlightened me, but not in the way I expected.

I realised there was a pro-vaccine-mandate population out there. Little did I realise that this pro-vaccine-mandate population endorsed what I would previously have regarded as a parody straw man of a vaccine mandate: an extreme, indefinite house arrest version with no defined stop condition.

I'm a day older, wiser, and sadder.