Cancer only effects that one person, it is not a communicable disease.
Let's try a more apt analogy:
If someone you cared about got ebola, but they did not want treatment, nor to be quarantined, but decided they were just going to hang around you, your friends, and your family until they died, do you think they should be allowed to do so?
Of course not. Anybody with ebola should be quarantined during the time they have it.
But your analogy doesn't make sense. I have never been against quarantining people who have an infectious disease. I am against quarantining people who don't have the disease.
People can be infected with COVID 19 and be infectious to others without presenting symptoms for quite some time.
Nope.
But of course the dead paid a higher price. That is what I am saying, the cost of death is higher than the nebulous psychological cost you keep going on about.
I mean: you don't seem to care about the price they pay when they are alive, so I'm surprised you would then put weight on their death. But while they might be partly culpable for their own death, they are not culpable for the suffering put upon them while they were alive, from a mandate that makes their lives wretched. That was imposed by humans, not the pitilessly indifferent forces of nature.
You are once again incorrect in your pontification about my feelings. You should probably stop doing that.
In the former case they will be far less likely to be infected by the virus, and far less likely to die as a result, as they continue to live their distress will fade, though they still may have to bear the psychological burden of watching their friends and family who still refused the vaccine catch the virus and die. In the latter case, everyone who cares for those people will be made more wretched by having to mourn those preventable deaths.
I mean both. The deaths are preventable, therefor they are unnecessary.
With a communicable virus, they are not only taking unnecessary risk for themselves, but for everyone around them. Just like a person who takes an unnecessary risk by driving at high speed, exceeding the speed limit, on a crowded highway. You are advocating that we let them be a danger to everyone because they might become distressed by being forced to slow down.
People without COVID are not a danger to anybody in transmitting COVID.
You can have COVID and transmit it to others without ever knowing you have COVID. The unvaxxed are definitely a danger to everyone as a result.
Costly treatments, when the vaccine is free for them. There is also the long haul effect of COVID 19 that is not entirely understood, because of the short time COVID 19 has been with us. Suffice to say that after recovering from COVID 19, and even when symptoms are mild and not requiring treatment, long-term effects are being seen:
COVID ‘Long Haulers’: Long-Term Effects of COVID-19
I hardly see what the price of the treatments has to do with it. The vaccine is free to the end users in America, it isn't 'free'.
The vaccine is free to end users, COVID treatments are not. That is what the price of the treatment has to do with it.
Of course there could be long term effects from having had COVID. But the people who choose not to be vaccinated have decided that they are willing to take that risk for themselves.
Why do you imagine that they even understand those risks? You hand waved away the problem of misinformation and outright lies before, but those things mean that the unvaxxed likely do not know the risks they are taking.
Yes, you have somehow come to the conclusion that psychological harm, no matter the extent, is worse than death. That is not a view I have seen espoused from many people. In fact, in my experience, that makes you quite unique.
No, I do not mean that all psychological harm is worse than death.
You are unable to quantify the psychological cost, yet you are willing to die on the hill of that cost being worse than death. There does not seem to be much light between your position and the one I described.
That is unadulterated bullshit. I have never said anything different. I fully understand that more people, both vaxxed and unvaxxed will pay the ultimate cost of dying as a result of a failure to impose widespread mandates.
No, I mean the people dying will be overwhelmingly the unvaccinated. They are paying the cost of being unvaccinated, not the vaccinated.
That is demonstrably incorrect. The unvaxxed pay the cost as well, including the cost of delayed medical care, mutated strains against which the vaccine may be less effective, as well as those unquantifiable psychological costs that you place so much importance on in your calculus.
Apathy with regard to getting a vaccine does not mean one is vehemently opposed to getting a vaccine. It means that one does not care enough either way, and therefor take the easier course of doing nothing. You are not forcing anything when you overcome apathy. You are just making the apathetic see that one course is more beneficial for them that the other.
Of course the vaccine mandate coerces people to do something they did not want to do before. That's the point of the mandate.
Apathy is indifference, not opposition.
Someone who is apathetic has not strong feeling either way, you can hardly be said to be forcing them to do something against their will by overcoming apathy. Your arguments are becoming more bizarre by the post.
I don't know if your objection is to the word 'force', but you are definitely coercing them to do something that they had chosen not to do when you make their lives wretched if they don't do it.
My objection is the one I have stated. We are talking about the apathetic here, not those who are opposed to getting the vaccine.
Can you forgive me for being a human being that values life above all else?
I value it highly, but I don't value it above 'all else'
I understand, you just value psychological costs that you can't quantify more.
I'm glad to hear there is indeed a tipping point in your calculus.
Why are you pretending that we have not just spent several posts discussing those who are simply apathetic about getting the vaccine, and do not actively object to it? No, that number is not 40%, but it is a non-zero percentage.
I did not pretend anything. I am trying to be very very clear, in fact, about what scenarios I am answering.
A mandate where 40% of the population is apathetic is different to a mandate where 40% of the population is vehemently objected is different to a mandate where 20% are apathetic and 20% vehemently object.
We are talking about the real world scenario where we do not know how many are apathetic, we just know that it is a significant portion of the young adult cohort who are currently unvaxxed.
I am not dehumanizing anyone by applying that description to the cases you present. Possessing a fragile ego is a very human behavior.
But it isn't even accurate. If a mandate negatively affects your social and economic health, it is not 'fragile' for your mental health also to be affected. And if you end up getting the vaccine because the social and economic exclusion was too high a price to pay but you still feel upset by being forced to take it, that doesn't mean your ego is 'fragile'. It means you are upset.
Accurate or not, saying someone has a fragile ego is not dehumanizing them.
