Wartime draft vs vaccine mandate

[Toni]

The Viet Nam war was not an emergency. Neither was Korea.

REGISTERING for the draft is a legal requirement for all 18-25 year old male citizens but being drafted is not. Even during war time, there are ways to avoid being drafted. My grandfather was not drafted in WWI because his father had died and my grandfather's labor was required to run the family farm as his next oldest brother was a small child. My father was not drafted in Korea because he was married and had kids. One of the largest expansions of our post secondary educational system happened because of two things: 1)vets taking advantage of educational benefits awarded to vets and 2) college aged males taking advantage of deferred draft for students. Obviously, some are physically unable to serve in the military and some are able to receive deferments due to religious grounds. I'm sure I'm leaving out some things.

You are leaving out that the draft is immoral.

War is immoral except when it is even more immoral not to fight a war. The US Civil War was moral because failure to fight that war and to win it would have meant the continued enslavement of millions of people. WWII was moral because it stopped the expansion of Naziism, fascism, and the Holocaust. The fact that neither war resulted in a perfect end to the evils it set out to end does not make those wars more moral/less immoral than the alternatives.

 

[Swammerdami]

I hope QOPAnon gets its stories straight about WHY we should hate the Democrats. I'd thought we were supposed to hate them because they were stealing money from the chattering classes to feed the hungry children of thugs and bitches. But now we learn that the D's are instead intent on starvation.

Some of the R's want to coerce or trick people into revealing how they voted. Is this actually a false-flag operation by the D's? To decide who gets placed on which boxcar?

 

[Toni]

By this do you mean that a person can't work certain jobs or buy food in certain ways if they are unvaccinated? Most jobs and businesses do set some conditions on employment, and I don't think most people would desire to see that change.

If Toni's version of the vaccine mandate was enforced, the government would prevent a person, and all her household members, from leaving their residence. Some jobs--in particular, the kind of upper-middle class jobs that the chattering class enjoys--can indeed be worked from home. But you can't rotate a tire or lay bricks or drive a bus or prepare food in an industrial kitchen from home.

It would be one thing if non-government workplaces decided for themselves if the great unvaxxed were allowed to work there, I suppose. But even then, it seems to me that the ordinary leftist sympathies go out the window--does it sound right to you that a corporation can tell you to get a medical procedure and if you do not get it, you're fired?

I was also required to undergo specific vaccinations, including an annual flu shot in order to be employed at my former employer. If I were not retired, Covid vaccination would also be required for me. Failure to comply without valid medical documentation supporting such refusal ( severe allergy to vaccine components, chemotherapy, etc.) would mean furlough until such time as the employee complied. Of course no one forced me to work for my former employer.

And under my scenario,no one would be forced to be vaccinated. They simply would not be protected from the consequences of their refusal and simultaneously would protect the general population, including those medically unable to be vaccinated from the selfish idiocy of the vaccine refuseniks.

Note: I mentioned that of course people could receive packages, home delivery or other contact delivery of needed goods, including groceries. No one would starve.

This would provide the best opportunity for preventing the continuing hardships faced by all by the pandemic, including dealing with the inevitable vaccine resistant mutations that arise in unvaccinated people.

 

[ideologyhunter]

(Oct. 15, 2021)
723,000 covid deaths in the U.S. since spring 2020 doesn't settle the debate? We've never lost this many people in any war. There aren't many analogies for this disaster. It is sickening to reflect on how we could have diminished this mass tragedy. Covid has been second and third in the list of most common causes of death for Americans; for a few months starting in Dec. 2020 it was number one. Dying, or causing someone else to sicken and die, because you opted to forego the vaccination, is supremely stupid and selfish.
A good sobering read on the disaster, and one that is devoid of politics: Every Minute Is a Day, co-authored by an ER doc who was on the covid frontline, in a hospital complex in the Bronx.
Employers, airlines, business owners should have the power to turn you away if you could get the vax but won't.

 

[RVonse]

(Oct. 15, 2021)
723,000 covid deaths in the U.S. since spring 2020 doesn't settle the debate? We've never lost this many people in any war. There aren't many analogies for this disaster. It is sickening to reflect on how we could have diminished this mass tragedy.

The country of Australia wanted to find out and was severely reprimanded by the PRC. Most everyone agrees the pandemic originated in Wuhan, China. There seems also zero debate that this could have been stopped early by the PRC before it went global. It is even conceivable that had Trump gotten what he wanted (no travel from China) the US may have escaped the virus early on.

What is still a mystery is how the virus originated. No one so far, (excepting Australia) has even bothered to find out.

If this virus was indeed partially designed by men....and that is still a big if....this whole pandemic was created by men in the first place. We just do not know but if so, talk about a crime against humanity. All that we do know at this point is that this virus is very contagious to humans as though it could have been designed that way.

Covid has been second and third in the list of most common causes of death for Americans; for a few months starting in Dec. 2020 it was number one. Dying, or causing someone else to sicken and die, because you opted to forego the vaccination, is supremely stupid and selfish.
A good sobering read on the disaster, and one that is devoid of politics: Every Minute Is a Day, co-authored by an ER doc who was on the covid frontline, in a hospital complex in the Bronx.
Employers, airlines, business owners should have the power to turn you away if you could get the vax but won't.

Oh boo hoo about the vaccine. What if the virus had not appeared in the first place? Wouldn't that have been even better for the world?

We should be finding out all the details of the lab in WuHan, including any US involvement. All of humanity deserves this.

 

[ZiprHead]

Oh boo hoo about the vaccine. What if the virus had not appeared in the first place? Wouldn't that have been even better for the world?

Another pandemic was never an if, it was always a when.

 

[Jarhyn]

Mandates versus drafts

What are the relevant similarities and differences between the scenarios of a military draft and a vaccine mandate:

Military draft:
A country that is attacked by an identifiable foreign enemy and requires an immediate and sizable military enhancement will impose a draft on its citizens. Unless you are granted certain exemptions, then you are required to fight. That may involve you being moved to a faraway land, and unable to see your loved ones for extended periods of time. Your life is in danger because others will deliberately try to end it.

Vaccine mandate:
A local culture or even the entire globe is under a severe threat. We have available various means to weaken that threat. None of them require uplifting yourself and traveling to distant parts of the planet on a long term basis. Instead you can travel just a few miles to your nearby pharmacy to greatly assist. The vaccine itself is for most people very safe, cheap, effective. It often has very mild and short-term side effects that diminish in mere days. Nobody is trying to kill you either, there is overall great shared benefit if we participate.

In what way would it make sense for anyone to defend a military draft, but oppose a vaccine mandate? If anything, the reverse makes a lot of sense. I am not aware of a human that is taking that former position---just thinking about the connections between the two possibilities.

So, there are certain things I will not do. I will not spawn vehicles of evil into the world. I need to be able to steer my mind, the things I make, and the way they shall be applied. I would as soon be tortured in cell, stinking and crying and feeling awful as I do when what is a very deep wound of recent trauma is reopened. I will not solve problems for the wrong people nor give answers deep and useful which will be abused. I will sooner die for this cause than for the cause of a force not aligned to the philosophy of peace and love. I would sooner end the universe than turn fundamental answers such as to shape a boot stamping on a face forever.

If fascism rises, I will fight it, and I will fight it as a soldier, not a wizard. And I will hate that I must. But I expect I will have to fight it from outside these borders.

This contrasts to the idea that my life might end for far less executive purposes, from a stupid disease because the enemy we fight is an otherwise immortal cancer that rides on a wave of misery and death, whose defeat does not birth new horrors but for which some fret over coercion against such stupid and Darwinian foes.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Oh boo hoo about the vaccine. What if the virus had not appeared in the first place? Wouldn't that have been even better for the world?

We should be finding out all the details of the lab in WuHan, including any US involvement. All of humanity deserves this.

The virus first got noticed on the world stage in 2003, although similar pathogens have existed prior to that. It appears to have shown up again in 2012, but with insufficient human transmissibility to be a problem. It appears to have been simmering in Wuhan for some time before it blew up.

Thus it's pretty clear we have a precursor capable of infecting humans but not capable of meaningful spread between humans. Mutations sometimes turn it into a human-transmissible version.

 

[Jarhyn]

Oh boo hoo about the vaccine. What if the virus had not appeared in the first place? Wouldn't that have been even better for the world?

We should be finding out all the details of the lab in WuHan, including any US involvement. All of humanity deserves this.

The virus first got noticed on the world stage in 2003, although similar pathogens have existed prior to that. It appears to have shown up again in 2012, but with insufficient human transmissibility to be a problem. It appears to have been simmering in Wuhan for some time before it blew up.

Thus it's pretty clear we have a precursor capable of infecting humans but not capable of meaningful spread between humans. Mutations sometimes turn it into a human-transmissible version.

Not to mention that bats are a more than a bit reliant on biological warfare to warn off predators. They will be more effective than humans for sure at fomenting nasty shit, same as mice and rats.

As long as you are a mammal whose strategy is eating bugs full of Bloodborne pathogens from that feed on humans, you will probably be well armed against such humans fucking with you, and for good reason!

 

[Metaphor]

That does not correctly characterize any proposed vaccine mandates I've heard of in the United States.

I was under the impression that this board was not limited to discussing United States policy, or indeed, any particular country's policy, but about discussion. The OP spoke about vaccine mandates in general. Now, I agree that Toni's vision for a vaccine mandate is so extreme that even normal authoritarians could not stomach it.

Well yes. As a college professor, I am already required to test for tuberculosis and vaccinate for influenza as a condition of employment. If coronavirus is added to that list it makes perfect sense to me, as it would be for the same reason - the nature of the disease is such that a person cannot know whether they infectious and therefore a danger to the student body, or not. A private business should absolutely be "allowed", possibly even required, to make reasonable concessions to the safety of the consumers who use their products.

When you say 'even be required', what is it you are saying? That the government should force businesses to fire employees who don't get vaxxed?

 

[Metaphor]

By this do you mean that a person can't work certain jobs or buy food in certain ways if they are unvaccinated? Most jobs and businesses do set some conditions on employment, and I don't think most people would desire to see that change.

If Toni's version of the vaccine mandate was enforced, the government would prevent a person, and all her household members, from leaving their residence. Some jobs--in particular, the kind of upper-middle class jobs that the chattering class enjoys--can indeed be worked from home. But you can't rotate a tire or lay bricks or drive a bus or prepare food in an industrial kitchen from home.

It would be one thing if non-government workplaces decided for themselves if the great unvaxxed were allowed to work there, I suppose. But even then, it seems to me that the ordinary leftist sympathies go out the window--does it sound right to you that a corporation can tell you to get a medical procedure and if you do not get it, you're fired?

I was also required to undergo specific vaccinations, including an annual flu shot in order to be employed at my former employer. If I were not retired, Covid vaccination would also be required for me. Failure to comply without valid medical documentation supporting such refusal ( severe allergy to vaccine components, chemotherapy, etc.) would mean furlough until such time as the employee complied. Of course no one forced me to work for my former employer.

And under my scenario,no one would be forced to be vaccinated. They simply would not be protected from the consequences of their refusal and simultaneously would protect the general population, including those medically unable to be vaccinated from the selfish idiocy of the vaccine refuseniks.

Note: I mentioned that of course people could receive packages, home delivery or other contact delivery of needed goods, including groceries. No one would starve.

This would provide the best opportunity for preventing the continuing hardships faced by all by the pandemic, including dealing with the inevitable vaccine resistant mutations that arise in unvaccinated people.

Of course people would starve. Some people do not have an income unless they work. And when those people do not pay their rent or their mortgage, they will be evicted. Now, charity food banks still operate, but perhaps they will refuse to serve the unvaccinated too.

Then all the people you despise can either die from starvation or die from COVID. Everybody's happy!

 

[Metaphor]

The Viet Nam war was not an emergency. Neither was Korea.

REGISTERING for the draft is a legal requirement for all 18-25 year old male citizens but being drafted is not. Even during war time, there are ways to avoid being drafted. My grandfather was not drafted in WWI because his father had died and my grandfather's labor was required to run the family farm as his next oldest brother was a small child. My father was not drafted in Korea because he was married and had kids. One of the largest expansions of our post secondary educational system happened because of two things: 1)vets taking advantage of educational benefits awarded to vets and 2) college aged males taking advantage of deferred draft for students. Obviously, some are physically unable to serve in the military and some are able to receive deferments due to religious grounds. I'm sure I'm leaving out some things.

You are leaving out that the draft is immoral.

War is immoral except when it is even more immoral not to fight a war. The US Civil War was moral because failure to fight that war and to win it would have meant the continued enslavement of millions of people. WWII was moral because it stopped the expansion of Naziism, fascism, and the Holocaust. The fact that neither war resulted in a perfect end to the evils it set out to end does not make those wars more moral/less immoral than the alternatives.

I did not say there were no just wars, so your aside is entirely pointless. I note though your callous disregard for the lives and limbs and consciences of people who are not you (young men).

 

[Metaphor]

I will agree that there should be no vaccine mandate for the following categories of people:

1) Those who are medically unable to safely be vaccinated.
2) Those who choose not to voluntarily be vaccinated also agree to remain confined in their home, along with all other household members, and to only work remotely and to only make purchases, etc. online, with contactless delivery options. That way they avoid infecting those who are medically unable to be vaccinated. This isolation should be enforced. Those choosing this option are required to maintain their finances in such a way that they are able to keep current on mortgage/rent, all other periodic bills and not be a financial burden on society.

No exceptions.

Forever?

Also: the other household members also cannot leave the home? Forever?

Until the pandemic passes.

So: forever. There is never going to be COVID-zero. COVID-19 isn't going to be smallpox (though the public health miracle that the elimination of smallpox was is beautiful). Until you define what the pandemic passing is, you mean 'indefinitely', and indefinitely means forever.

 

[Toni]

I was also required to undergo specific vaccinations, including an annual flu shot in order to be employed at my former employer. If I were not retired, Covid vaccination would also be required for me. Failure to comply without valid medical documentation supporting such refusal ( severe allergy to vaccine components, chemotherapy, etc.) would mean furlough until such time as the employee complied. Of course no one forced me to work for my former employer.

And under my scenario,no one would be forced to be vaccinated. They simply would not be protected from the consequences of their refusal and simultaneously would protect the general population, including those medically unable to be vaccinated from the selfish idiocy of the vaccine refuseniks.

Note: I mentioned that of course people could receive packages, home delivery or other contact delivery of needed goods, including groceries. No one would starve.

This would provide the best opportunity for preventing the continuing hardships faced by all by the pandemic, including dealing with the inevitable vaccine resistant mutations that arise in unvaccinated people.

Of course people would starve. Some people do not have an income unless they work. And when those people do not pay their rent or their mortgage, they will be evicted. Now, charity food banks still operate, but perhaps they will refuse to serve the unvaccinated too.

Then all the people you despise can either die from starvation or die from COVID. Everybody's happy!

I cannot speak to other countries but in the US, there have been prolonged and generous unemployment benefits, a moratorium on evictions and additional income provided. Food banks, and various community services have been very generous. In my community, several times in the last year, there have been very generous give aways of food, largely shelf stable foodstuffs but also cheese and other dairy products and meat. Sure, if you were not allowed to leave your home, someone would have to bring such to you but that could easily be worked out.

You really should stop projecting your own emotional shortfalls onto me. It fools no one and makes you look petulant.

 

[Toni]

Until the pandemic passes.

So: forever. There is never going to be COVID-zero. COVID-19 isn't going to be smallpox (though the public health miracle that the elimination of smallpox was is beautiful). Until you define what the pandemic passing is, you mean 'indefinitely', and indefinitely means forever.

Of course there will be another pandemic. That is a given.

As for COVID19 (COVID-zero is an impossibility. Google how COVID19 was named) disappearing? Well, not with idiots telling others that being vaccinated violates their personal rights and messes with their DNA and involves microchips being inserted and other nonsense---or at least it will take a long time and will eventually disappear while simultaneously proving Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest in human populations.

Really, people just need to grow the fuck up, figure out that their personal rights don't matter much in emergency situations and that everyone (this means EVERYONE) has a responsibility to not be a health hazard and to do their part to end the pandemic. Oh, and people need to quit lying to those who are less able to reason well and/or are mentally unstable enough to believe all the stupid conspiracy theories out there.

 

[Metaphor]

I was also required to undergo specific vaccinations, including an annual flu shot in order to be employed at my former employer. If I were not retired, Covid vaccination would also be required for me. Failure to comply without valid medical documentation supporting such refusal ( severe allergy to vaccine components, chemotherapy, etc.) would mean furlough until such time as the employee complied. Of course no one forced me to work for my former employer.

And under my scenario,no one would be forced to be vaccinated. They simply would not be protected from the consequences of their refusal and simultaneously would protect the general population, including those medically unable to be vaccinated from the selfish idiocy of the vaccine refuseniks.

Note: I mentioned that of course people could receive packages, home delivery or other contact delivery of needed goods, including groceries. No one would starve.

This would provide the best opportunity for preventing the continuing hardships faced by all by the pandemic, including dealing with the inevitable vaccine resistant mutations that arise in unvaccinated people.

Of course people would starve. Some people do not have an income unless they work. And when those people do not pay their rent or their mortgage, they will be evicted. Now, charity food banks still operate, but perhaps they will refuse to serve the unvaccinated too.

Then all the people you despise can either die from starvation or die from COVID. Everybody's happy!

I cannot speak to other countries but in the US, there have been prolonged and generous unemployment benefits, a moratorium on evictions and additional income provided. Food banks, and various community services have been very generous. In my community, several times in the last year, there have been very generous give aways of food, largely shelf stable foodstuffs but also cheese and other dairy products and meat. Sure, if you were not allowed to leave your home, someone would have to bring such to you but that could easily be worked out.

You really should stop projecting your own emotional shortfalls onto me. It fools no one and makes you look petulant.

Toni, the fact that you do not understand that house arrest for refusing a medical procedure should not be in the policy possibility list, let alone your preferred policy, reflects so much about you. I can only hope that the people in power, as madly authoritarian as they are, take your policy off the shelf and fling it into a black hole.

 

[Metaphor]

As for COVID19 (COVID-zero is an impossibility. Google how COVID19 was named) disappearing? Well, not with idiots telling others that being vaccinated violates their personal rights

Being forced to be vaccinated or else the government makes your life wretched and impossible does violate your personal rights.

 

[Toni]

I cannot speak to other countries but in the US, there have been prolonged and generous unemployment benefits, a moratorium on evictions and additional income provided. Food banks, and various community services have been very generous. In my community, several times in the last year, there have been very generous give aways of food, largely shelf stable foodstuffs but also cheese and other dairy products and meat. Sure, if you were not allowed to leave your home, someone would have to bring such to you but that could easily be worked out.

You really should stop projecting your own emotional shortfalls onto me. It fools no one and makes you look petulant.

Toni, the fact that you do not understand that house arrest for refusing a medical procedure should not be in the policy possibility list, let alone your preferred policy, reflects so much about you. I can only hope that the people in power, as madly authoritarian as they are, take your policy off the shelf and fling it into a black hole.

I'm so sorry that you have little knowledge of history.

The fact is that in the not too distant past, entire households were quarantined when certain illnesses were present. My mother's household was quarantined for 6 weeks when she had scarlet fever, which is a strep infection with a rash. It can be quite dangerous without appropriate treatment, which is antibiotics, which did not exist in her day. Strep is quite contagious and entire households were quarantined to prevent the spread of this dangerous infection to other community members. YES, this quarantine had negative effects on her family. Her older siblings elected to drop out of school entirely rather than attempt to keep up with school work at home or spend time in summer to make up missed work. I'm sure that this had some long term negative effects on them, but they ended up doing pretty well for themselves, nonetheless.

But by keeping my mother and her siblings and her parents confined to their property, other members of the community were not infected and the illness was contained. No one else's life was placed at risk.

Of course, today, strep infections are treated with readily available antibiotics. Parents are still required to keep their children home while they are contagious. And are still required to ensure that their children are appropriately vaccinated unless there is a valid medical reason not to vaccinate. Again, to prevent illness from spreading and to protect the lives of those who are medically unable to be vaccinated or to withstand illnesses for which there is no vaccination.

Maybe you have never seen a child with leukemia who also contracts an ordinarily mild childhood illness such as chickenpox nearly die of the ordinarily mild childhood illness--but I have.

 

[Toni]

As for COVID19 (COVID-zero is an impossibility. Google how COVID19 was named) disappearing? Well, not with idiots telling others that being vaccinated violates their personal rights

Being forced to be vaccinated or else the government makes your life wretched and impossible does violate your personal rights.

You should try watching a child who is medically unable to be vaccinated nearly die because some asshole wouldn't get vaccinated or stay home when they were sick.

Life is not impossible or wretched because one must stay home unless they comply with the mandates of the local health authorities. People can and do live while confined to their homes. What do you think happens to people who are unfortunate enough to contract COVID19? THEY HAVE TO STAY HOME AND SO DO THEIR FAMILIES!!!!!!!!! Apparently that's not a problem, just like it's not a problem that assholes can infect medically vulnerable people, can place enormous stresses on our medical system and resources in the name of what? It sure ain't freedom. It's selfishness and ignorance.

 

[Metaphor]

I'm so sorry that you have little knowledge of history.

The fact is that in the not too distant past, entire households were quarantined when certain illnesses were present.

Oy fucking gevalt. Just no. You are not proposing the quarantine of households with COVID. You are proposing the lockdown of households whether they have COVID or not.

Just stop with your dishonesty. Just stop. Fuck.