Doug Morris

whYNOT, I think it would take a lot of research to get a good handle on the points you raise, and all this is irrelevant to my main point. Whether or not it is true in the case of COVID-19, it is possible that, for some disease, mask mandates and/or vaccination mandates could be legitimate to prevent people from physically endangering others. I will nevertheless address a few of your points. This can be handled by controlled clinical studies, careful comparison of different situations, and general knowledge of the workings of vaccines. There are various complications that must be considered when interpreting such data, including the effects of new variants, and that surges tend to die down after a while for reasons that are not yet fully understood. I have never advocated lockdowns, which are much more disruptive and destructive than mandating masks or vaccines. Vaccines are very effective, but they need time to take effect, and even once they take effect they are not 100.0% effective. Infections also need time to take effect.

We don't debate whether an electronic camera really experiences the outside world, because we know cameras are not conscious and therefore do not experience anything.

Can you back this up? You are conflating eradication and substantial reduction. Do you have examples?

Spreading germs can rise to the level of physical force. Refusing to subsidize someone else's health care can not. Stealing and engaging in force out of envy should be illegal. Doing something that might tempt oneself to engage in physical force should not in itself be illegal. These can also decrease risk levels. There are other considerations that must be taken into account, as I have indicated before. As I have previously stated, guilt or innocence lies not in being infected or not, but in unnecessarily increasing the risk of spreading infection. Even taking the life of one person by initiated force is too many.

Yes, although not 100.0% of the time. Only to the extent that they affect whether people mask and/or vaccinate.

Sounds like you're attacking the concept of consciousness. Can you clarify?

I never said the analogy was exact. My point was that simply endangering people can rise to the level of physical force, Sounds like people refusing to mask or to vaccinate because that's the way of the "conservative" tribe, and some of them dying as a result. (This is not the reason for mandates.) No. Investing recklessly does not physically endanger anyone.

Withholding possibly relevant information from police investigating a crime, or refusing to testify in court, can reasonably be considered obstruction of justice. Certainly lying to the police or in court can be. Acting recklessly in a way that makes an ongoing situation more difficult to deal with is also an interference with the defense of rights.

You are conflating stopping with reducing. We are having a surge now because of omicron. But this does not mean the vaccines are useless. The point has never been that infection/transmission is unacceptable, stigmatizable, immoral, or actionable. The point is about unnecessarily increasing risk. I have never advocated lockdowns, which are much more disruptive and destructive than mandating masks or vaccines. Who claimed that you do? I certainly never did.

Simply having them is not a mandate, but cooperating with them can be.

The analogy would be something like, if an enemy has invaded, you should not leave useful supplies lying around where the invaders can easily seize them.

This has been going on as long as the country has existed, in connection with a lot of things. But at least some of it is ignorance, not malice or powerlust. We still have to get it clear exactly what the government should be doing.

It may be more a matter of carelessness, blundering, faulty reasoning, or narrow focus than of intention. Even clearly legitimate government actions, such as using the police against violence and theft, can be twisted into evil. Totalitarian regimes do a lot of this. Even in this country, there seem to be instances of police misconduct motivated by such things as racism and/or out-of-control emotions, or even by corruption. We need to clearly identify just what government should be doing, and to get as close as possible to the government doing those things and no others, and to improve what is possible.

I'm not asking that anyone "pay", just that people take reasonable precautions. No, it proves that vaccination does not give absolute, exceptionless, 100.0% protection. Vaccines are effective and necessary. *** Governments have bungled and had too low an opinion of mankind. This does not mean that anyone who advocates limited mandates is guilty of such things.

You take reasonable precautions in any case, such as locking up your residence and workplace and safeguarding your valuables and not revealing too much information to strangers or casual acquaintances. If you have gold coins, precious stones, or valuable collectibles, you should be especially careful whom you tell. My brother was running a postage stamp business out of his residence for a while. Whenever he put something relating to this in the trash, he wrapped it up well and put it under something else. If a stranger is on your property uninvited, you can ask them what they're doing there or "May I help you?". If you're alarmed enough you can call the police; you don't have to be sure anyone means any harm.

The authorities have made mistakes in communication and in other respects. This is a separate issue from the philosophical point I am trying to clarify.

Since the point has to do with unnecessarily causing increased risk, it can apply to people who may be carrying the virus, even if we never know whether they actually are.

I'm not claiming to have carried out a specific calculation or gotten a specific number. Maybe you should give us more details on your "very small" conclusion. The issue of age of consent probably needs to be more carefully studied and analyzed. It might need to be something more nuanced than a one-size-fits-all cutoff age. I am not talking about emergency, although that concept might need to be considered in particular contexts.

If you want a figure for risk, one approach is to compare infected but not recovered figures to total population. This would give us (398,809,771 - 318,729,335) / 8,000,000,000 = 80,080,436 / 8,000,000,000 = .0100100545 (using the figures you linked for COVID-19 and a total population figure that is an overestimate for 2020 and 2021, resulting in a slight underestimate of the risk). This is a bit more than 1%, and includes deaths, long COVID-19 which can be drastic in its effects, and those who just haven't recovered yet. If we count only deaths, we get 5,771,527 / 8,000,000,000 = .000721440875, or slightly more than 1/14 of 1% so far - there will be more. This may seem like a very small number, but bear in mind that we are talking the risk of death, not the risk of getting long COVID-19, losing a job, having a bad crop year, or having an investment tank. The risk is substantially larger for some people. I am not advocating trying to hold a particular individual liable for a particular infection - that is nonsense. I am advocating holding people responsible for unnecessarily increasing risk. We've been over this before.

There's no way to analyze it objectively? I don't claim to be an expert on either COVID-19 or statistics. I am just trying to clarify certain philosophical points. So you're defining "mandate" in such a way that "lockdown" becomes a subcategory. But there are mandates that are not lockdowns.

Don't bet the ranch. I am not defending lockdowns at all. I am saying that mandates, which are much less disruptive, may be justified depending on the technical details of a particular disease. Why?

OK, so we need to define the levels involved more precisely before applying this. The point is that they may become infected and spread it. No, there is no such right to force feed. However, there is a right to restrain a prisoner who is endangering the other prisoners' food. No, the argument I am making only applies to endangering others, not to running one's own life. Not true. As far as I know no one has claimed the vaccine is capable of eliminating the virus. The point is that it reduces spread and therefore reduces risk. The aggression is against anyone who is being sufficiently endangered. Which implies that different people should be treated differently i.e. individually. It is an argument against a mandate which is one size fits all. There is more difference in the degree to which a person is endangered than there is in the degree to which a person is guilty of endangering.

If refusal to vaccinate does indeed rise to the level of initiation of physical force, and the geographical area within which this occurs has a basically legitimate government, then that government is qualified to apply that restraining force. Shooting up in the air is still aggression, against anyone being endangered thereby. The aggression is against anyone who is being sufficiently endangered.

Not if someone else is creating the risk.

Requiring someone to mask or to vaccinate is much less drastic than taking away their children. Not masking or not vaccinating endangers many more people than those in one's household. No, but going around unvaccinated might be. Similar to the difference between recklessly shooting a gun that may be loaded with either blanks or live rounds and recklessly shooting a gun that is loaded with live rounds. The guilt or innocence lies not in whether one is actually infected, but in the extent to which one is increasing risk.