The Vent and Rant Thread

[cromag]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

1. Vaccines aren't 100% effective. Having a large number of unvaccinated people means the virus still circulates and could infect me, even though I'm vaccinated
2. More importantly, having a large number of infected people alongside a large number of vaccinated people is the ideal way to get a new variant of the virus that the current vaccines won't protect against.

Beat me to it.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by cromag

Beat me to it.

And in addition to the risk they pose to others in terms of the virus, who’s picking up the tab for treating the unvaccinated who get sick? And who might be denied access to health care resources because the unvaccinated are usurping them?

[John F]

Originally Posted by issybird

And in addition to the risk they pose to others in terms of the virus, who’s picking up the tab for treating the unvaccinated who get sick? And who might be denied access to health care resources because the unvaccinated are usurping them?

And in addition, they are human beings, why not try to help them? In addition to the other reasons mentioned, there is the chance of death, longer term side effects, ...

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by issybird

And in addition to the risk they pose to others in terms of the virus, who’s picking up the tab for treating the unvaccinated who get sick? And who might be denied access to health care resources because the unvaccinated are usurping them?

So...here's my question about that. Do we make the same arguments about other risky behavior? Who picks up the tab when the obese get sick? Who might be denied access to health care resources because the obese are usurping them? (insert any risky behavior in the two sentences.) Or what about people who stuff their faces with MEAT? With high-fat foods, clogging their arteries, even if their bodies are slender? What about having a drink of booze? Or 5? Every person who is significantly overweight uses up healthcare resources and drives up the price of healthcare and insurance--affecting everybody. Ditto heavy drinkers, bad-food eaters and on and on. Very, very few people can say that they belong to NO "bad choice" groups.

What's next, after insisting that the unvaccinated wear indicative armbands, or whatever they'll come up with?

My point is, we seem to have become obsessed with dictating what other people will do. It's a very bloody slippery slope. It's very easy to lost sight of freedoms, when everybody is scared, but we don't run around chasing people door-to-door during flu season. We don't walk up to strangers in a restaurant and rip food out of their hands, or publicly critique what they're eating--or forbid it.

It's all well and good for us to look at the last 18 months and react in a way that starts stripping away the rights of people to make crappy choices--and we have to be very careful about that. We still don't have enough distance from everything that's happened to even KNOW if half of what we did (lockdowns, shutting schools, closing small businesses) even had any good impact, other than removing people from circulation enough to stem the speed of infection--and it's not clear that the lockdowns did that.

It's too easy to slip into Burn The Witch behavior. We already see this all around us, with people being burned alive on Twitter, FB, etc., (obviously, not literally speaking) losing their jobs, being "cancelled" and all that crap. Now we're hearing talk that "The Unvaccinated" won't be able to have their jobs, won't be able to go here, go there...this begins to sound pretty damn creepifying to me. And if it were me espousing this, I'd give very careful thought to Martin Niemöller's famous quote.

Frightened people often trade freedom for security--and somehow, it never works out well.

Hitch

[John F]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Okay, so--and understand that I am vaccinated, being "that age," but:

As you've been vaccinated, why do you care if someone else is? The vaccine works, or it doesn't, yes? If it doesn't, why get it? If it does, why do we care if John Doe does or doesn't get it himself?

Alternatively and conversely, if you don't trust the vaccine, why insist that someone else get it?

Hitch

Originally Posted by Hitch

So...here's my question about that. Do we make the same arguments about other risky behavior? Who picks up the tab when the obese get sick? Who might be denied access to health care resources because the obese are usurping them? (insert any risky behavior in the two sentences.) Or what about people who stuff their faces with MEAT? With high-fat foods, clogging their arteries, even if their bodies are slender? What about having a drink of booze? Or 5? Every person who is significantly overweight uses up healthcare resources and drives up the price of healthcare and insurance--affecting everybody. Ditto heavy drinkers, bad-food eaters and on and on. Very, very few people can say that they belong to NO "bad choice" groups.

What's next, after insisting that the unvaccinated wear indicative armbands, or whatever they'll come up with?

My point is, we seem to have become obsessed with dictating what other people will do. It's a very bloody slippery slope. It's very easy to lost sight of freedoms, when everybody is scared, but we don't run around chasing people door-to-door during flu season. We don't walk up to strangers in a restaurant and rip food out of their hands, or publicly critique what they're eating--or forbid it.

It's all well and good for us to look at the last 18 months and react in a way that starts stripping away the rights of people to make crappy choices--and we have to be very careful about that. We still don't have enough distance from everything that's happened to even KNOW if half of what we did (lockdowns, shutting schools, closing small businesses) even had any good impact, other than removing people from circulation enough to stem the speed of infection--and it's not clear that the lockdowns did that.

It's too easy to slip into Burn The Witch behavior. We already see this all around us, with people being burned alive on Twitter, FB, etc., (obviously, not literally speaking) losing their jobs, being "cancelled" and all that crap. Now we're hearing talk that "The Unvaccinated" won't be able to have their jobs, won't be able to go here, go there...this begins to sound pretty damn creepifying to me. And if it were me espousing this, I'd give very careful thought to Martin Niemöller's famous quote.

Frightened people often trade freedom for security--and somehow, it never works out well.

Hitch

I think you moved the goal posts.

[ApK]

This is heading into P&R territory. And even through I have zero desire to punish myself with those areas of discussion here, I will comment: I agree with cromag and pdurrant on these specifics in this case, and agree with Hitch on the mindset we should be coming from. That is, for America, anyway, start with a foundation of valuing and respecting individual liberty, then carve out exceptions only when legitimately warranted. It's much easier to accept compromise when something you don't like is trusted to be a justified exception, and not yet another step down a slippery slope toward a totally different kind of society, diametrically opposed to your values.

[issybird]

In my state:

• Car insurance isn’t mandatory
• Adults don’t need to wear seatbelts
• Motorcyclists don’t need to wear helmets

These are not good things, lest you think I’m suggesting the contrary. My point is that society makes these decisions all the time and there’s a truly nutty ethic going on here to make it an outlier in these specifics. Why anyone would draw a line in the sand about something that’s safe, free, readily available and would do so much good for the individual and society is beyond me. I have no objections at all to limitations on the freedoms of those who exercise their freedom not to be vaccinated.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by issybird

In my state:

• Car insurance isn’t mandatory
• Adults don’t need to wear seatbelts
• Motorcyclists don’t need to wear helmets

I just finished The Great Courses "Law School for Everyone" which had an interesting lesson on seatbelts and tort liability. My main takeaways were, 1, There are genuinely complicated competing societal issues driving some of the seemingly nonsensical happenings in the legal system, and 2, I no longer have good enough memory to be a lawyer. I should have gone to law school when I was younger!

[poohbear_nc]

*ack* The smoke from the forest fires has reached the east coast. We are under an air quality advisory for the next 3 days or so.
Yet another reason to continue wearing a mask outside the house.

[Deskisamess]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

*ack* The smoke from the forest fires has reached the east coast. We are under an air quality advisory for the next 3 days or so.
Yet another reason to continue wearing a mask outside the house.

I wondered why the air quality was so bad yesterday. Didn't even think about the fires.

[cromag]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

*ack* The smoke from the forest fires has reached the east coast. We are under an air quality advisory for the next 3 days or so.
Yet another reason to continue wearing a mask outside the house.

Yep. Yesterday our sky was hazy and orange in the middle of the afternoon. I recall it being about the same last year, when other fires were burning out west.

I really hope this doesn't become normal.

[ownedbycats]

WeatherCAN on my phone sent me a warning about the smoke this morning. It's slightly hazy here too.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

*ack* The smoke from the forest fires has reached the east coast. We are under an air quality advisory for the next 3 days or so.
Yet another reason to continue wearing a mask outside the house.

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

I wondered why the air quality was so bad yesterday. Didn't even think about the fires.

Originally Posted by cromag

Yep. Yesterday our sky was hazy and orange in the middle of the afternoon. I recall it being about the same last year, when other fires were burning out west.

I really hope this doesn't become normal.

OHHH!! Maybe that's why my asthma is worse.

I did notice a nifty orange moon last night, and wondered about that too. Now I understand!

[ownedbycats]

Here's a map for wildfire smoke:

https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/

Looks like the east coast of U.S. got hit a lot worse than the Maritimes.

[Hemmi]

We've been dealing with it the last two days. Thankfully it's moving out.