That was allowed early this summer because the infection rates were going down. I went without masks for 4-6 weeks this summer until the infection rates started going up rapidly and my city made it mandatory again. So it is a matter of following guidelines. Of course there was a strong desire for us all to get back to normal and I think cancelling mask mandates was too early due to public pressure.
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No more babies being delivered at NY hospital
- Thread starter Kenny
- Start date
Those who don't vaccinate for political and disinformation reasons are a major reason we are seeing a rise in infection rates.
How are people refusing to get vaccinated helping eliminate Covid? How is their decision contributing to society?
Yes, because like the vaccination the antibodies the body produces, either by being sick or vaccinated, wanes over time. These specific antibodies are not permanent. Have you heard of the booster shots being recommend after 6 months? That's because the antibodies are phasing out and the body loses the ability to fight the virus.
There are cases of people being infected with Covid more than once.
Since you are concerned about fairness:
Is it fair to refuse vaccination and mask usage only to learn you got Covid and infected numerous other people?
Explain what is fair about a reckless person infecting other people.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
Not yet you mean. It's looking more and more like a possibility.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
Anyone can get covid, from literally anybody. So how would one even know he infected anyone?
Perhaps if they were in your own house you could guess. Do you wear masks and practice social distancing at home?
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Most transmission by far is airborne, however it is best to sanitize the hands as well and also to wear the mask when indoors in a public area.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Why are you so willing to tell private and public enterprises what they supposedly must or must not do and then complaining about "mandates"?
Yes, seriously.
These are people who directly interact with patients and other staff. An outbreak among them could compromise patient care and cost lives. They also all generally belong to professions whose codes of ethics uphold patient well-being as paramount.
What do you see as unfair about an employer requiring their employees to take reasonable, moderate measures that:
- are directly related to their job
- help to protect the ability of their employer to continue operating
- are literally a matter of life and death
- the employees are generally already ethically obligated to do?
Please be specific.
"People".... i.e. your fellow anti-vaxxers?
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Yeah, sure.
PureX
Veteran Member
When you have to run to such extreme characterizations to make yourself appear reasonable, and your 'opponent' unreasonable, you have already lost the debate.
PureX
Veteran Member
If they work in health care, I would call them out of a job.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
Again, swoosh.. totally missed the point!
Alienistic
Anti-conformity
What have you won? You’ve stated any unvaccinated medical staff are selfish, destructive to society, good riddance to their careers while they’ve been delivering millions of children, and saving and treating millions of lives before and after a vaccine. How many children have you delivered or lives treated through the pandemic?
Alienistic
Anti-conformity
Then one can say that most human beings attacking and ridiculing the character of others as being dangerous are also dangerous themselves if they have not followed up with their boosters on all or most other vaccinations since birth. Claiming immunity when they have no such thing.
Still very much allowed in a majority of places in the States. And most are refusing to wear any masks because they are not mandated to if they received a vaccine, especially at many employers. Yet they are in the loving, selfless, and great society member club.
Certainly agree that it were too soon to remove these policies.
Condemning the willfully unvaccinated is not done to get them to comply. It's merely a repudiation of such people. It is understood that if they could be shamed into getting a vaccine, that would already have happened.
Presently, we have no way to force people to to take vaccines when not medically contraindicated, but I would change that if I could. Many have just given up on these people and no longer care about what they think, want, or think their rights are without any interest in their obligations. They are no more competent to make a decision about a vaccine than a two-year old. We don't give the two-year old the freedom to refuse, because we understand that he is not qualified to make such a decision however much he tantrums in the examination room.
The problem is that Western democracies see adults as autonomous citizens qualified to pursue happiness intelligently, and thus esteem maximal freedom in decision making. But when they are adults physically, but think like children, then there's a problem. You asked for a solution? There is none short of compelling vaccination for those eligible. If we're unwilling to do this, then we have to simply let them do as much damage as they desire.
Some drivers have demonstrated that they aren't qualified to own and operate a motor vehicle. We take their choice away from them. And if they kill driving drunk, we take their freedom, their right to vote, and their right t own guns, making them essentially children again in all these areas. There is precedent. I would be perfectly happy with a law that forces one to comply with the nations requirement that he take a vaccine out of civic duty the same way that there are laws compelling him to file and pay his taxes, also a civic duty, and one where freedom to comply or not is unacceptable.
I agree with that assessment. Why shouldn't I? I think that the willingly unvaccinated don't recognize that they are being seen more and more as enemies, menaces, antisocial. Who else is seen that way? I don't think antivaxxers are going to like realizing that they are seen about the same as pedophiles on the sex registry - not merely exercising a choice, but being selfish and destructive to others in so doing. One might object by noting that pedophilia is illegal, and most people saying so would agree that it should be, excepting NAMBLA members, who like antivaxxers, just want to be accepted for who they are and how they feel, and be allowed to pursue happiness as they see it without judgment or impediment.
What if pedophilia were legal like refusing a vaccine? Would the pedophiles be any less disesteemed and repudiated? The willingly unvaccinated might want to recognize that they are becoming no less unacceptable than the pedophiles. I'm amazed at how little insight there is among the willingly unvaccinated regarding how they are viewed by others. They just keep asking to not be judged as if that's even a possibility, like the NAMBLA member pleading to not be despised for feeling forbidden love. I can't see too many pedophiles thinking that that would help them, but the unvaccinated haven't gotten to the point of recognizing that they are becoming a disliked and marginalized as the pedophiles, or they probably wouldn't even admit it here any more than a pedophile would.
And to be clear, I do not think that the antivaxxer and pedophile are morally equal, just that they are both disapproved of by just about everybody else. Only one of these groups seems to have assimilated that, which surprises me somewhat.
Solutions to what? Getting such people to take a vaccine?
I'm afraid there are no better solutions than forced vaccination at this point. The next best is mandates that limit where the unvaccinated can work or take leisure. I like what Delta Airlines did charging a $200/mo surcharge on employees' health insurance to keep the premiums for the vaccinated as they were. Right away, about 20% of unvaccinated employees are now taking the vaccine: It worked. Delta Air Line’s $200 health-insurance surcharge for unvaccinated workers led to more vaccinations.
All of those who respond to a carrot have been vaccinated. As I wrote here yesterday, :
The people that could be convinced to become vaccinated by the science got their vaccines. Those that could be inspired by a sense of community responsibility got theirs. Those that don't want to be excluded from public places that require proof of vaccination got theirs. Those who were afraid to get and give COVID to loved ones got theirs. Those who could be persuaded by a beer, baseball tickets, or a cash reward got theirs. To think that those who remained unvaccinated could be brought into the fold with less peer pressure is to ignore the fact that they were not willing to vaccinated before the nation began applying pressure.
And a few are responding to the stick:
Those that could be convinced by peer pressure got theirs. Those that could be convinced because they thought that losing their jobs was bad for themselves and their families have had theirs. Those that needed to see death from COVID up close to be convinced got theirs.
What remains are people that won't be vaccinated until forced to either by economic, social, or legal means, or until terrified watching a loved one dying of COVID, all forms of stick. So, if the community is going to mobilize to contain the threat the unvaccinated pose, it will have to compel them, since nothing else works on those still refusing vaccines. Those asking to be spoken to or about kindly as if they might respond to that simply aren't credible.
Yes, but I also realize that that is irrelevant to the matter of whether they should be required to be vaccinated on the job. It's not about punishment, so what these people did in the past isn't a factor as to whether they should be required to be vaccinated to work in hospital or not. That's based on safety and perhaps some employer considerations, like the inevitable litigation to come when patient acquires a lethal case of COVID in a hospital with unvaccinated staff, and his survivors see it as the hospital lottery. That'll happen anyway when patients catch it form other patients, but those case will be resolved without payment or by smaller nuisance lawsuit payments. It's not about punishing nurses, or even forcing them to get vaccinated, since employer mandates don't accomplish that. They merely force the nurses to not work unvaccinated, and I'm sure that it is hoped that they will do what's needed to stay on.
I'm fond of nurses. I'm a retired physician who worked for decades with them in ERs, ICUs, nursing homes, and hospices, and I like an respect almost all of them. But the ones who want to refuse a vaccine more than work around hospital patients have nothing to offer the profession any longer, and ought to find other work if they can, start up a business, or stay home with one fewer sources of income and hope that they can make the necessary cutbacks to make ends meet.
And though I have always and still do admire nurses for their expertise, their sense of duty, their work ethic, and their characters, I don't respect their choice to refuse a vaccine. It's very surprising that they can be so antiscientific.
What we're saying is that we don't understand or respect their choice to refuse a vaccine, but that we don't want them on the job without it. That's hardly bashing.
Hopefully, the all do, or else why issue them? The intended consequences are to segregate the unvaccinated from the from places where they can harm others. There will no doubt be unforeseen and unintended consequences as well, such as a shortage of maternity nurses in some maternity departments.
I had a similar discussion with another RF participant recently on a related subject - people who aren't trained in critical thinking aren't aware of what others know. I was told that nobody could judge the analysis of anybody else because they don't exactly why they came to the conclusions they, conclusions that it was stated could be just as logical as the critical thinker's. Yet it is possible to say that somebody who has no more evidence than the skilled critical thinker but comes to an opposite conclusion is wrong, even if it's not possible to convince such a person of that. They tend to think that nobody thinks any differently than they do, and that therefore their opinions are just as valid, like the religious apologist who can't understand that unlike their religion, science generates demonstrably correct facts and has proven its methods sound by the incredible success generated using them.
Yet to such people, all belief is faith, science is a religion, and their faith-based ideas are as good as any since that's all that exists even with the scientists. It's kind of an illustration of Dunning-Kruger - being too uninformed to know that you are uninformed, to wrong to know you're wrong, and cut off from being informed because of an inability to process evidence properly.
So yes, given the rigorous rules of valid reasoning, to one who knows them and sees that the other does not judging by his fallacious arguments their non sequitur conclusions, he can say with assurance that the other guy's reasoning is fallacious. I like to use the example of adding a column of numbers. Once one is skilled at adding and has confirmed that all of his separate additions and therefore the sum derived using them are correct, he can tell somebody with a different answer that they are wrong, and ignore them when they say that they think they "made the right decision" (came up with a proper sum) and I can't say that it wasn't logical. Yes I can, just as I can say the vaccine refuser is wrong. There are not multiple, subjective, equally valid ways of arriving at sound conclusions.
I know what evidence is available, and I how to distill it down to a logical recommendation. If somebody disagrees, it's like the guy who disagreed about what the sum was. It doesn't matter what he thought. Whatever it was was wrong. If you come to a different conclusion, you either didn't consider all of the relevant evidence or you didn't know how to interpret it (he either didn't start with the right numbers or he added them badly). And it matters not if he can't see that or argues in a Dunning-Kruger way that his sums are just as logical and just as valid. He will still be considered wrong as I consider every willfully unvaccinated person for whom vaccination is not medically contraindicated.
They really had a choice. They weren't held down and vaccinated against their wills. Those that quit are the evidence of that. Nobody stalked them, or arrested them, or chloroformed and vaccinated them. And they exercised that choice, some opting for the vaccine, some for other work.
They may be pressured eventually by financial concerns if they will not vaccinate and cannot earn what they were earning in a professional position. Some will do fine, and everybody should be happy - the nurses that don't want a vaccine, and those that don't want to employ one without it.
However, some will feel financial pressure, although they have incurred that themselves with their choice. I'm thinking about the nurse who is a single parent of minor children with a single source of income who was just getting by before a significant drop in income. Such a person might have to give up vacations, braces, private school, eating out, and in some cases, a roof and food for the kids, or relent and take the vaccine. I don't see too many nurses letting that happen to themselves and their families.
Unveiled Artist
Veteran Member
Can you give me a concrete example?
Something that stands alone (not from preexisting biases)
For example, I have said repeatedly I'm not against vaccines and science. I'd be dead without it.
Where have I said otherwise?
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Keep telling yourself that.
Unveiled Artist
Veteran Member
Seriously. You guys put more into my story than what's actually true....
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
From John Hopkins University:
A Q&A WITH AMESH ADALJA
New data was released by the CDC showing that vaccinated people infected with the delta variant can carry detectable viral loads similar to those of people who are unvaccinated, though in the vaccinated, these levels rapidly diminish. There is also some question about how cultivatable—or viable—this virus retrieved from vaccinated people actually is.
While this sounds discouraging, it’s important to keep three things in mind:
A Q&A WITH AMESH ADALJA
New data was released by the CDC showing that vaccinated people infected with the delta variant can carry detectable viral loads similar to those of people who are unvaccinated, though in the vaccinated, these levels rapidly diminish. There is also some question about how cultivatable—or viable—this virus retrieved from vaccinated people actually is.
While this sounds discouraging, it’s important to keep three things in mind:
- Vaccines remain highly effective at preventing severe disease.
- Breakthrough infections among vaccinated individuals remain uncommon.
- The majority of new COVID-19 infections in the US are among unvaccinated people...