Easy Truth

Public vs. private in this context means means healthcare delivered by an entity that is subject to liability. Once it is public or universal or owned by everyone, the responsibility can be evaded more easily vs. an entity that you have a contract with.

That statement is way to broad. I assume you are saying that government should not preemptively intervene in a decision that should be left between each and their doctor, or their judgement. Because a policy of non intervention is part of a political philosophy too.
The fact that it is right or wrong to give a vaccine to children should not be coerced by any government. Some will argue that at some point (in the emergency) it would be right to use that kind of force. But the "at what point" is not objectively clarified. Or maybe similar to "the age of consent", it will be determined by vote.

Unfortunately, she was pretty much wrong about the historical facts and the nature of these societies. They were not primitive savages barely more advanced than a Neanderthal, like you could say of tribes in the Amazon. If they were, Rand might have a point. But they weren't. They had some notions of property, just not identical with Europeans. The Aztecs had beautiful cities with better hygiene than any European city. Most Native American cultures had very rich agricultural knowledge. Many had sophisticated knowledge of astronomy. There were rich systems of organization. Of course there were brutalities and disrespect towards individuals and strong notions of collectivism, but the Europeans did this as well. 
I like to imagine our modern-day society discovering a society like the ancient Greeks from 300 BC.  This is actually even a bigger technological and philosophical gap than Europeans had with the Aztecs or Inca. Would it be right to subjugate them for their alleged primitivism, murder them if they were inconvenient, or burn down their houses just to make room for yours? When people talk about colonialism, they don't mean selling down next to someone else and sharing space. They talk about use of force and racism. 
Yeah, it's great that the British brought great technology to India, but colonialism is the wrong way to do it. You could trade with them, you could have in exchange for mutual benefit, anything like that. It seems like Rand would say "but there is actually nothing you could trade since they are just that primitive". As advanced as we are, if we could trade with the ancient Greeks, we would find plenty of reason to do so. 

Wrong philosophy of science will create junk science but I will not go on that tangent for now.
The issue of visiblility or the pleasure of visisiblity is for "you to see who I am".
The invisible are alone. Lying all their life. Never being seen. And in some sense never seeing.
Certainly not being able to see what could have been.
The pleasure or maybe the necessity of "being loved" is "who I really am" being accepted and appreciated, rather
the made up person or projection that others see.
In this case, honesty is the only path to ultimate fulfillment.
It is also a great risk because "some" will see who you a really and reject or try to harm you. In many situations being an Objectivist is seen as being evil. But that is who I am. (By Objectivist I mean Rand's over all ideas are the closest to what I see as true)
A major pleasure in life is in fact "playing" with others, i.e. having fun interacting. Add to it productive work
emanating from that activity, and it becomes very fulfilling activity.

Check your motives!!! "Not because you owe it to anyone????". Boy, how magnanimous. The underlying argument is IN FACT, "you owe it to the public".
"Makes you better off" is being used in a collective sense, meaning your type would be better off. Really, maybe an 89 year old person would agree with you that his age collective would be better off. Harrison should be the final arbiter of what makes him better off. The argument you are putting forth can be considered both a utilitarian and an altruistic one.
As a pedantic point, connection to a sewer is not necessarily a public issue as it can be done privately too. I suspect you are making a case for "objective value". The problem is that you are ending up making a case that "you" should do it even if you don't believe it is best for you and that is where it has the altruistic basis. Although, maybe Harrison is too stupid to make such judgments. Therefore, we need the philosopher kings to force him to do what is right.
If you start with making the case that "I wish you had done it, it would make me safer", that would be more rationally self interested and you might be able to build on that. Changing the wording of "public good" to "urban hygiene" to "expert opinion" works in other forums but shouldn't work here.

Yeah.  The "public" does not have any health.  I don't value the "public good" either.

Wrong philosophy of science will create junk science but I will not go on that tangent for now.
The issue of visiblility or the pleasure of visisiblity is for "you to see who I am".
The invisible are alone. Lying all their life. Never being seen. And in some sense never seeing.
Certainly not being able to see what could have been.
The pleasure or maybe the necessity of "being loved" is "who I really am" being accepted and appreciated, rather
the made up person or projection that others see.
In this case, honesty is the only path to ultimate fulfillment.
It is also a great risk because "some" will see who you a really and reject or try to harm you. In many situations being an Objectivist is seen as being evil. But that is who I am. (By Objectivist I mean Rand's over all ideas are the closest to what I see as true)
A major pleasure in life is in fact "playing" with others, i.e. having fun interacting. Add to it productive work
emanating from that activity, and it becomes very fulfilling activity.

It's related to the idea of clear and present danger. The fundamental question of when is a threat actionable.
The final calculation takes into account the ROI. 
At what point is it cheapest to win the battle?
How much would it hurt if we defended ourselves and how?
Is there a better way?
etc.
I am arguing that just because I or you see a threat it does not make it actionable.
Passports means forced vaccination in addition to the issue of an attack on privacy.
A potential to spread germs cannot be construed as aggression. Otherwise you are guilty of it when you breathe.
Based on that, I would add that it is not justification for governmentally forced vaccination for many reasons. . The most important is the issue of liberty meaning the right to flourish. Implied in the right to flourish is your hopes and your choices, your autonomy and your freedom to act rationally. Without it, you, in a sense don't exist. You don't have a right to exist. Eventually you will have to shut up and do as you are told ... or else.
As I said, I am vaccinated. To reiterate, my fear is that with the idea of a person introducing "unnecessary risk" as aggression, liberty at it's core is under threat.

The analogy treats everyone who isn't vaccinated as if they actually have COVID at all times.  The better analogy would be should we ban all driving because some people who drive might drive drunk, and some of those people who drive drunk might harm others (although for most people we're not talking about death and dismemberment but a pretty unpleasant cold).

I don't disagree with you but I was hoping you could make  far stronger argument.
What is a sterilizing vaccine?
Why would coercion not be necessary if we accept a premise that they are increasing risk? Would it ever be necessary or justified?
Let's say the vaccine worked and it worked one hundred percent. I would argue that a person has right live their life as stupidly as they want as long as it does not harm others. The counter is made that they are in fact harming others. But why? Let us say the utopia is a covid free world, like a small pox free world. Do we have a right to force a utopia on another? Is there such a right? I would argue there is no such right. In fact, I would argue that we each have right to be unmolested by another's Utopian vision. Be it a green climate world, an Islamic republic, or a worker's paradise.
In this case there is a risk to taking the vaccine. Especially long term effects on reproduction. There is no justification to force parents to inoculate their children with such an experiment. Ultimately there is a risk that something may be discovered later on and all us who took that vaccine may regret. It is not impossible.
There is a right to quarantine that others have. But that is a right to quarantine a person who has an infectious disease. Not a right to quarantine a person who MIGHT have it.
Let us say there was NO vaccine. Then everyone MIGHT have it. Then we throw a dice to incarcerate some people? Or we find a scapegoat. The unvaxxed are now the new version of the sewer rats of the Nazi's. They're not people anymore. When don't we have a right to have concentration camps to quarantine them. All in the name of the common good.
Vaccine passports are the new Scarlet Letter.
To be clear, I am vaccinated. I am not making a case to serve me specifically. The principle is of liberty and one's rights is at stake here.

Absolutely, it is to one's (self) benefit. Good people meaning people who can enhance your life, trade, recreation etc. What is the point of jeopardizing that? Being dishonest in that environment is a loss of opportunity.
But this does not hold true when you are amongst "bad" people. Identifying friend from foe is the key skill.

The post-kantians claim that all consciousness is basically self-consciousness (this is also true of indian philosophy, but I'll limit myself to the former). The argument can take this form: self-awareness is a quality possesed by certain objects of observation (humans), but not by other objects (like rocks). Now, if you have no clue what self-awareness is, you are unable to recognize it, even if you encounter it a quintillion times. You must have a prior acquaintance with it, even to recognize it in your own person. This prior acquaintance is demonstrated by showing how all human judgements, without exception, have a universal abstract form, which could be formulated like this: 'I'm aware of my self-awareness'.
Take the statement: 'I love the Spice Girls'. What is its basic form? 'I know that I'm acquainted with my musical taste'; I know (awareness), that I'm acquainted with myself in some way (self-awareness). Another example: the statement 'Tiger Woods did not properly study his opponents' occurs in a declarative form: 'I know that I'm acquainted with my opinions about Tiger Woods'. 
Now, do you imagine your reality? Well, not quite. The mind does have the power to delimit itself to particular thoughts; however, to delimit itself to something is, nevertheless, a form of being limited. Those two perspectives are reconciled by synthesis: consciousness is theoretically unlimited, but practically limited. That is, there's no theoretical limit to how much you can alter your world, but there's the practical limit of being constrained by your past choices and shortcomings. By the time you finished reading the previous sentence, you've already deduced time, space and Kant's categories (which he merely lifted from Aristotle). This kind of dual-consciousness is Rand's starting point, and she never considers anything other than what is given in it: 'I don't feel that I create nature, therefore I don't. I feel that I'm free, therefore I am free. Q.E.D.'
Inspired by Kant's third critique, Hegel and Schelling consider the possibility of an original non-difference of freedom and determinism. The unconscious plant has no clue what its doing, yet it appears utterly purposive, as if it was consciously grasping at some end-goal. The kantians try to strip away the mistique surrounding freedom by proposing that determinism and freedom could be a single phenomenon: a blind, mechanical march of nature towards increasingly sophisticated tools of self-knowledge (organisms). Under this model, there's no skepticism about whether the world of mental phenomena conforms to the world of material objects, since they're one world, not two. This is a proto-darwinian view that suggests the possibility of laws which are both mechanical and somehow purposive (laws of evolution).

So consciousness is not defined as awareness. Meaning awareness of awareness is the indicator of consciousness in the context of this thread? Where does existence and the awareness of it fall in? Meaning without awareness of self? It seems that consciousness is being defined at a certain level of awareness. As in a bacteria is not conscious because it is not aware of itself. Perhaps a certain level of ability to identify is necessary.
A lawnmower is not conscious, not because it is not aware of itself, it simply is not aware/conscious. To say a clock is aware of time is a metaphor. Or a car being aware that there is not enough gas.
Sometimes consciousness is shown to be a chemical reaction. Sometimes it an awareness of awareness. Sometimes awareness of self as apposed to other consciousness or possible consciousnesses (plural). And sometimes as having freewill.
I suspect this is at the core of your question/interest. You are trying to disprove something. I would like to know what are you trying to disprove to "them"? And what is it that "they" believe?

I assume you are asking "did I (you) create your environment". As in being in a dream, which is your creation. But that is a state of consciousness in the context of psychology.
This is to deal with the question of "do I create existence".

"Conscious of" has to mean conscious of something that exists beyond/outside itself. Otherwise it is conscious of being conscious of "being conscious of" nothing in particular but of being "conscious of". Conscious of what?
Of being "conscious of". 

"Conscious of" has to mean conscious of something that exists beyond/outside itself. Otherwise it is conscious of being conscious of "being conscious of" nothing in particular but of being "conscious of". Conscious of what?
Of being "conscious of". 

No, being asked to watch a video by known admirers or Ayn Rand is one way to go. This was recommended to me by some QAnon people. I watched it. It was ridiculous.
 

It's more like Nostradamus. Don't be so kind about it - the people who follow it are unhinged, treating all these things as hidden truths, but far from any rational methodology. Mysteries treated as guides to the real truth, where encoded messages are open to interpretation without a means to decipher them. And the mysteries are treated as evidence. Not to mention that "the storm" never did happen. The prophecy didn't come true.  
So when JL talks about "engaging the ideas", he's talking about engaging the equivalent of the ideas people have from looking at inkblots. How am I supposed to engage with that? I don't mean that metaphorically, I truly have nothing to say. And if I talked to JL about his claims, the evidence would be based on these mysterian messages. At least with flat earthers, they make claims you can prove or disprove. 
Why do you think that? A lot of political and social movements have been started based on conspiracies about what is "really" going on. 

She would say:
"You guys who voted for Reagan and the so-called Moral Majority, may you be damned!"
"Boydstun, from Kant to Dewey, for cryin' out loud, get off my back!"
"Here is what I have to say about presidential candidate Donald Trump. . . . No wait, I wrote the same stuff about candidate George Wallace in 1968."
"Given what I said about the Russian soul, it's not surprising the mystics came back into fashion and power there."
"That this is Putin's philosopher is hardly surprising."
"What did I say needed to be done concerning the moral ideal of altruism and self-sacrifice and scarcity of understanding and esteem for the concept of individual rights? Today the consequences of failure in that philosophical revolution among the people are all around."
"What did I say about the growing fashion of anti-man worship of nature? About holding up one's sores for nobility, about tribalism? I need not repeat. Read what I wrote."
Real Revolution

If you obey the laws of nature, are these laws the master of your rights? (that was metaphorical but helps in making my point)
The law should protect your rights and everyone else's rights. No one is being subjugated when a neighbor objects to you burning leaves when the situation is incendiary. The neighbor has a right to their property too. Protection of their rights is not the same as a government supporting your subjugation or slavery. And the idea that a supporter of individual rights wants to burn leaves whenever they want is simply a smear. A person who is not aware of anyone else's rights can't be aware of their own, it's a description of a sociopath. Such a person is anti social and incapable of trade. That does not describe what an individualist is.
True enough. But the current way of governing is out of control as you would agree. The exact source or solution is nuanced and confusing. But at it's core, treating innocents like they are guilty is a key indicator of evil.

And that's the bottom line. Everything else follows.

And that's the bottom line. Everything else follows.

I wonder how a proper Objectivist would report on the data, but I propose the following:
It would be 100% fact based, no shred of anything for a. personal financial gain b. political gain c. institutional or political reputation or d. with the intent to cajole or persuade people to any so called desired behavior i.e. no social engineering of sentiment or action of any kind.
It would look at medical interactions in society from the individual's perspective, and individual rights, the individual's freedom, health, and very lives.  This is in many senses opposite to the so-called "public good" of public health approaches.  I.e. the data would be looked at in the sense of treating individuals, how individual people fared, their health, their freedoms, their mental well being etc. not merely the so-called health of a collective... using who knows what as statistical standards.  A herd which is "treated" and "managed" be said to be more healthy, even when enslaved, or if part of the heard are disadvantaged or sacrificed (culled) for the sake of the collective whole.  Herd mentality is not how an Objectivist would think of it or deal with it.  Sacrifice of the innocent for NO MATTER HOW MANY other individuals IS EVIL.
 
Lives saved?
I wonder if anyone has done the analysis thusly:
How many people under the age of 50, how many CHILDREN would have died or suffered irreparably educationally, physically, mentally, had nothing been done, no vaccines, no imprisonment, no mandates, no muzzling.
Then how many were affected because of the measures taken.
Then doing the same for people over the age of 50, no measures... versus measures taken.
 
I wonder whether in the end, in the pursuit of sheer numbers of "survivors", many of the young with their whole lives ahead of them have been brought low and in some cases died for no good reason.  That whole lives were sacrificed on the altar of public good in return for survivability of the very old, good numbers, and political and institutional reputation.
 
I have said it before, if you ask your doctor whether any proposed action is better for yourself (or your child) PERSONALLY, given all possible benefit and risks, and he/she hesitates or looks confused... THAT is no doctor, that is an agent of the State who has forsaken the sacred duty to treat you PERSONALLY for your benefit, for your life and health... and you should find yourself a new doctor as fast as possible.
 
You see, no matter how mundane and saccharine and academically philosophical the trolley problem seems, its purported utilitarian or arithmetical solution we now see in full.  For the herd, all that really matters are the numbers, whether one arrived at it by sacrificing innocents is beside the fact... the so-called public good has nothing to do with individuals... the greatest "number" of survivors.
  
I believe Rand solved the "trolley problem" with the idea of every person being an end in himself, which already requires no purposeful act to cause the sacrifice of anyone, much less children, who knew no better, some of whom (those so called "rare" few) died because of it.
 
Public health is inimical to individual rights and is an evil, as evil as any of the other proposed Globalist, centrally planned erosions of our freedoms, or what is left of them.
 
I am ashamed most prominent Objectivists are going along for the ride with not so much as a peep.
 
The only brave and outspoken Objectivist pushing back on the madness I can think of currently, is Alex Epstein.
 
 

I've always thought the virtue of honesty in this context was related to avoiding or preventing "evasion" which seemed to be at the root of evil. Was it to "not lie to others"?