Sympathy for Anti-Vax/Maskers?

[Hydra009]

FFS.  You even do that weird thing conservatives do by implying that covid numbers are inflated because non-covid stuff like a broken arm is considered covid.  LOL.  That's a hard position to take seriously.  And to think, you were one of the very few (along with yours truly) to rapidly go to red alert about what at the time was a little known Wuhan outbreak.  Quite the change over the years.

And I didn't want to discuss currency inflation in a discussion about vaccine mandates because that's pretty close to literally discussing the price of tea in China.  :/

I don't even know why you staked out this position since you already correctly pointed out that the majority of covid hospitalizations/deaths are unvaccinated people.  It's blindingly obvious that vaccines reduce hospitalizations/deaths.  But then you seemingly claim that higher vaccinated states are no better off than lower vaccinated states.  What a bizarre conclusion.

Oh well, don't say I didn't give you a chance to choose a better hill to die on.  I'm not even sure this is a hill.  You're just digging straight down at this point.

Sure, let's look at a few from the link I posted...

The KFF one?  Okay.

Oh, look at that, states with lower vaccination rates had higher covid death rates during the delta surge.  Well, color me surprised.  QED, btw.

"Conversely, states with the highest vaccination rates for older adults â€" Wisconsin, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Massachusetts â€" experienced comparatively low death rates among older adults during the Delta surge." About a 7 times lower death rate from covid.

Oh, will you look at that, states with lower vaccinations had up to 3 times the cases of states with higher vaccinations.   Again, this stuff isn't rocket surgery.

I will never understand why you not only seriously thought that 2+3 = 4, but insisted that you alone were right and everyone else was just some sort of fool.

And to top it off, I get bon mots like this:

Then there is no point in continuing the pandemic restrictions

US hits highest number of covid cases per day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq-v1TTUyhM

[Hydra009]

I'm not going to live in fear of something that literally is not going to hurt me, and if it does it's because I won the bad genetic draw and the vaccine didn't protect me like it does 99% of everyone else. That's just bad luck if it does, cant do anything about it.

I probably should've addressed this earlier, but vaccines do not and have literally never worked like that.  They're not some sort of magic talisman that makes you covid-proof.  You can still can get hurt, as can vulnerable people nearby.  I know this all too well.

Vaccines mitigate risk, they don't negate it.  Their effectiveness weakens over time and may be less effective against certain variants - variants that only exist because this thing has had plenty of hosts to incubate and spread, largely among unvaccinated people.

Instead of a talisman, think about it as medieval plate armor.  You (probably) won't die if you stand under a volley of arrows, but you definitely don't want to do that.

[Shiranu]

FFS.  You even do that weird thing conservatives do by implying that covid numbers are inflated because non-covid stuff like a broken arm is considered covid.

Yes, because that's literally what happens; you are in the hospital because you broke you arm, you test positive by the test they give; vola, the number of hospitalized Covid patients just went up.

Oh, look at that, states with lower vaccination rates had higher covid death rates during the delta surge.  Well, color me surprised.  QED, btw.

Yes, but the rates are not dropping; so fucking what if unvaccinated idiots are dying? Yall are literally the niggas saying, "FUCK EM, I DON'T CARE IF THEY DIE" and now yall suddenly do?

GTFO with that shit.

US hits highest number of covid cases per day

Again, so what? When 99% of the one's that are actually relevant, the one's who are seriously sick or dead, are unvaccinated... in yalls own words, fuck them, let them die.

You don't care if they die, but you do care that you can use their deaths as a means to expand government overreach? That's some dumb shit.

[drunkenshoe]

Well, if things really get out of hand and hospitals lose complete function, chaos rise up, military will take on and start to shoot/kill people at some point. The thing about this is that this has always been the case. So what people think about the 'mandates' in this context or why they are opposed to what, feel about the unvaccinated really doesn't matter. I mean, it really didn't matter anyway.

The bad thing -or good, depends on how you look at it- about that point is when you start shooting people things tend to get in order, fast. Yeah, fucked up as it is this is the reality of being a living organism. Everyone tends to avoid getting killed. I guarantee that. The worst thing about this is that when military gets that power once, it is very difficult to get it back under these circumstances. At least, until everyone is vaccinated and basic threats eliminated and the influence will go on decades. The only way to prevent this is not arriving to that point. Because it is a real point. This goes for everywhere around the world.

In my opinion -as far as I understand- there is a confusion in different levels about the concept of freedom in general, body rights; more than that about rights in general among some groups. For example, banning abortion and vaccination mandates are not even remotely related to each other. It's political propaganda. Unless you have a medical reason detected by professionals, you have to vaccinate. And esp. in a time of a pandemic, this must be done by force if needed. Shoot them with tranquilizers first and then vaccinated when they are out, better than shooting them with bullets. Because that's going to happen. If not in this one, the next one in a two decades the most.

This is not some philosophical, political 'freedom' debate. This is not something to leave people to decide. "It's my right not to get vaccinated!" There is no such right. It's made up. That is not what right is to begin with.

They will start shooting people. We won't believe how the fuck we arrived to that point. People will shoot back and they will die. It's not some anti-vax morons who are also responsible for other people remain unvaccinated/die and finally ending up dead, hooray good riddance case either. There will be children, toddlers, vaccinated people shot in body bags between all these. There is no winning for any side from that point on. These people must be forced to get vaccinated in some way. Money looks like the best incentive, but then they find out brilliant ways to sell shit we don't need. And they could do this if they really work for it. 

[GSOgymrat]

"Religious liberty" really has little to do with allowing people to practice their faith. To my knowledge, there is nothing in Christian dogma that would preclude being vaccinated against a disease. Religious liberty is a political tactic to oppose any governmental or social policies that individuals don't like. There need not be any evidence that these policies are contradictory to any established religious dogma. It's about as coherent as someone with tattoos saying they can't be vaccinated because they have a religious objection to needles.

Most evangelical objections to vaccines have nothing to do with Christianity

... In the grab bag of reasons for vaccine resistance, the religious exemption claimed by evangelicals is perhaps the most perplexing. The default ethical stance of Christianity is the Golden Rule: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” This principle was developed in a variety of other religious and moral traditions. ...

White evangelical Christians have resisted getting vaccinated against the coronavirus at higher rates than other religious groups in the United States. Some initial resistance came in the context of a familiar ethical debate: Did the creation of coronavirus vaccines involve cell lines produced from aborted fetuses? The short answer is: no. ...

The main resistance of evangelicals to public health measures does not concern abortion. Having embraced religious liberty as a defining cause, they are now deploying the language of that cause in opposition to jab and mask mandates. Arguments crafted to defend institutional religious liberty have been adapted to oppose public coercion on covid. But they do not fit.

More than that, the sanctification of anti-government populism is displacing or dethroning one of the most basic Christian distinctions. Most evangelical posturing on covid mandates is really syncretism, a merging of unrelated beliefs â€" in this case, the substitution of libertarianism for Christian ethics. In this distorted form of faith, evangelical Christians are generally known as people who loudly defend their own rights. They show not radical generosity but discreditable selfishness. There is no version of the Golden Rule that would recommend Christian resistance to basic public health measures during a pandemic. This is heresy compounded by lunacy.

It is worth recalling, as a matter of law, that someone does not need a good or theologically coherent religious-liberty claim to make a religious-liberty claim in court (absent fraud or opportunism). To deny such a claim, government needs a compelling interest advanced in the least restrictive manner. But it is hard to imagine a clearer, more fundamental example of a compelling state interest than preventing the spread of a virus that has already taken the lives of more than 800,000 Americans. ...

[drunkenshoe]

... Religious liberty is a political tactic to oppose any governmental or social policies that individuals don't like. ...

Well put. I think that's why laicism is always the most urgent. If you cannot establish that, secularism is pretty much what you want it to be depending on who has the more money and pushes harder. Administrations have to be anti-religious beyond a basic nonbelief quality. The general attitude should be negative, not zero. That's  how you take down organised religion.

[aitm]

The only difference between this “mandate” and the 10 or so that “have been” for 50 odd years is this is purely a political issue, not a health issue as it started out as. If Trump immediately agreed that this was a serious health issue and agreed with the pros that we needed a mandate this would have been accepted by nearly everyone, not because it was a mandate by the government, but because the real science demanded it. But now over 700,000 are dead just in this country beating the Spanish flu by 500,000+…..and no one seems to give a fuck. “Freedom” it seems….is not free.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I'm at a total loss to understand how you process information.

I'll break it down.

The dichotomy of this thread is "pro vax and pro mandate" on one side, and "anti vax anti mandate" on the other, as set up by the OP.

I am "pro vax anti mandate."  Although I don't fit the dichotomy, I am told that being "pro vax anti mandate" puts me on the same side as "anti vax anti mandate".

So, I am "pro vax anti mandate" and am lumped in with "anti vax anti mandate" it must be the mandate that is the important part, not the vax, because it is only the mandate part I agree with.

By removing the inferior part of the package deal, we are left with only "pro mandate" and "anti mandate".  The rest of what I wrote follows from there.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The only difference between this “mandate” and the 10 or so that “have been” for 50 odd years is this is purely a political issue, not a health issue as it started out as. If Trump immediately agreed that this was a serious health issue and agreed with the pros that we needed a mandate this would have been accepted by nearly everyone, not because it was a mandate by the government, but because the real science demanded it. But now over 700,000 are dead just in this country beating the Spanish flu by 500,000+…..and no one seems to give a fuck. “Freedom” it seems….is not free.

Trump has received the shot and told his followers that they should get the shot.  He was booed.  It isn't about Trump no matter how much people want it to be.

[aitm]

Trump has received the shot and told his followers that they should get the shot.  He was booed.  It isn't about Trump no matter how much people want it to be.

Irrelevant now Jason. Had he said so from the beginning, this shit would
not have happened. At least it would be on a much smaller scale. It IS what Trump started, because he DID NOT do anything THEN.

[SGOS]

I'll break it down.

The dichotomy of this thread is "pro vax and pro mandate" on one side, and "anti vax anti mandate" on the other, as set up by the OP.

I just read the OP.  You must be referring to what you glean from the thread as a whole.  The OP doesn't do that.  It's not even confrontational.

I am "pro vax anti mandate."  Although I don't fit the dichotomy, I am told that being "pro vax anti mandate" puts me on the same side as "anti vax anti mandate".

So, I am "pro vax anti mandate" and am lumped in with "anti vax anti mandate" it must be the mandate that is the important part, not the vax, because it is only the mandate part I agree with.

By removing the inferior part of the package deal, we are left with only "pro mandate" and "anti mandate".  The rest of what I wrote follows from there.

Almost but not quite, you serve the interest of anti-vax.  Yes, you belong in their boat.  This gets down to what I think and what you think, my semantics and your semantics.  Your position as well as mine don't necessarily describe everyone else, so neither of can make categorical statements about the motivations of others, or even what dichotomy is at stake.

First, I disagree that the mandate is the most important. Vaccination for everyone is.  The mandate is only a means to that end.  There are other means too, for example education, although obviously ineffective.

Second, you create a dichotomy for yourself that is more semantic than practical, especially in serving the needs of the public good.  Anti-mandate is an ideological stance that serves the same ends of those who disregard public safety by refusing vaccination.  Pretending you are above the fray, makes you part of the anti-vax threat to public health.  You don't want to wear the T-shirt, but you try to cover it up with a vest.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The govt tells us what to do with our bodies all the time.  It told me to put my body on the line when I was drafted for Nam.  It told me to get a whole slew of shots when drafted--and when going to school.

Boot camp, 1969. After boot I got a chance to look at my medical records. One entry read "SNM has volunteered to participate in a test of a new flu vaccine." Conflicted. I would have volunteered if ask, but that sneaky shit was annoying.

BTW most of my time in country was around the Tonle Sap, did you make it in country during your hitch? 

[Cassia]

Seems it is no longer standard for us to think about all the lives saved and suffering avoided by for instance, vaccinating nearly everyone against smallpox and polio myelitis. It was an enormous effort. Some of us would not be here now.

Many decades ago, there were poor decisions made in my family that led to members contracting polio. The guilt stories are on their 3rd generation of retelling, and I believe this has helped in this current situation.

[the_antithesis]

Seems it is no longer standard for us to think about all the lives saved and suffering avoided by for instance, vaccinating nearly everyone against smallpox and polio myelitis. It was an enormous effort. Some of us would not be here now.

Many decades ago, there were poor decisions made in my family that led to members contracting polio. The guilt stories are on their 3rd generation of retelling, and I believe this has helped in this current situation.

If WWII were to happen today, Hitler would win.

[Mermaid]

So the person who is triple-shotted, wears a mask, and advocates that it's ultimately a person's body and thus their choice if they want to get a shot is selfish...
But advocating for people with guns to force everyone to undergo a medical procedure against their will is selfless...

This really backwards world.

If you wear a mask and take precautions, no, you are not. You are doing the best you can do to avoid getting sick and getting others sick. Maybe I missed something.

Not following you on the part about the people with guns forcing medical procedures.