Doug Morris

Anyone whose risk of infection is increased, whether directly or indirectly. Everybody or almost everybody, to varying degrees. (Emphasis added.) There is some risk even for vaccinated people. If a person shares responsibility for their danger, it is still physical force to put them in even greater danger. It is not a question of outrage. It is a question of identifying physical force and restraining it. Refusal to vaccinate increases the amount of sickness and death that happens before the spread contracts. Thus it increases the danger to each individual. Nonsense.

I support medical exceptions. If the government requires someone to get vaccinated and they die from it, I support making heavy restitution to their estate. If the death is due to the malice or negligence of a doctor, nurse, national guardsman, bureaucrat, or other person working for the government, that guilty person should be held accountable. People who resist vaccination should be fined or incarcerated, not killed. The only way they would be killed would be if they pull a gun, knife, or bomb or assault someone, and maybe not even then. No immunity means the government and its officials, employees, and representatives can be held responsible for the consequences of their actions. It does not mean they can not use force.

If the police mistakenly jump to the conclusion that someone is committing a murder and gun him down, they should be held accountable. If a murderer is surrendering without resistance and the police gun him down, they should be held accountable.

Vaccines significantly reduce the danger of infection, and therefore significantly reduce the danger of transmission. The reduction does not have to be "blanket".

It is possible for individual police to be guilty of recklessness or excessive zeal in enforcing laws against burglary, shoplifting, counterfeiting, other forms of theft, driving under the influence, obstructing traffic, creating a disturbance, or other crimes. It is possible for this to cause harm, even death, to innocent people. If the police have too much immunity in such cases, it is not valid to use this as an argument for defunding the police or for repealing laws against burglary, shoplifting, counterfeiting, other forms of theft, driving under the influence, obstructing traffic, creating a disturbance, or other crimes. It just means we need to address the problem of excessive immunity.

Easy Truth, why did you react so negatively to my post of which this was the second sentence? I was agreeing with you that the government has too much power to claim immunity. How much of my post did you read? How carefully did you read it?

A mandate doesn't have to work this way.

The definition Easy Truth just gave does not say anything about immunity. I am arguing for vaccine requirements but not for immunity.

Easy Truth needs to give us a clear definition of the word "mandate". Please note that I have not been using that word.

The government has whatever degree of immunity it chooses. That can easily be a problem. Voters may be able to have some say. A constitutional amendment may help. The most important thing is to get more people to understand what government is and what it should and shouldn't do. This will lead to better election results, a better chance for good constitutional amendments, and better workings of the system. No. Poverty for some people does not translate into an obligation for anyone else. The point I have been making is, first, that spreading disease is physical force. Further, if one acts in a way that unnecessarily increases the risk that one will spread disease, one is initiating physical force. The simple fact that someone is poor or dying or lacks services does not constitute evidence that they have been subjected to physical force.

It shouldn't be.

The article whYNOT links to in turn has the following link: reported The article there gives a much more nuanced view.

Even if one assumes that the studies cited are perfectly valid and that the conclusions stated are fully proven, the logical conclusion would be that people who have been infected should not have to be vaccinated and should be entitled to the vaccine passports. It would still be appropriate to require people who have not been infected to be vaccinated. The article ignores the point that vaccination reduces the risk of infection, and therefore reduces the risk of becoming contagious. A few quotes from the article, with my comments: "There is simply no historical parallel for governments attempting to restrict the movements of healthy people over a respiratory virus in this manner." There is plenty of historical parallel for governments requiring people to be vaccinated against disease. "Meanwhile, people who’ve not had COVID and choose to not get vaccinated may or may not be making an unwise decision. But if they are, they are principally putting only themselves at risk." The article ignores the point that refusing to vaccinate contributes greatly to spread and thus puts other people in physical danger.

The shooter is putting people in physical danger. That's already physical force.

No action against the shooter?

I maintain that spreading air without knowing whether it contains COVID-19 virus is analogous to firing a gun without knowing whether it is loaded with blanks or live rounds. Not 100% analogous, but enough that we should consider the similarity seriously.

Not entirely true. From the Wikipedia article on vaccination policy: At various times governments and other institutions have established policies requiring vaccination, with the aim of reducing the risk of disease. For example, an 1853 law required universal vaccination against smallpox in England and Wales, with fines levied on people who did not comply.[23] In the United States, the Supreme Court ruled in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905) that states have the authority to require vaccination against smallpox during a smallpox epidemic.[24] All fifty U.S states require that children be vaccinated to attend public school,[25] although 47 states provide exemptions based on religious or philosophical beliefs.[26] Forced vaccination (as opposed to fines or refusal of services) is rare and typically happens only as an emergency measure during an outbreak. A few other countries[which?] also follow this practice. Compulsory vaccination greatly reduces infection rates for the diseases the vaccines protect against.[23] These policies stirred resistance from a variety of groups, collectively called anti-vaccinationists, who objected on ethical, political, medical safety, religious, and other grounds.[27] Other reasons including that socioeconomic disparities and being an ethnic minority can prevent reasonable access to vaccinations.[28][29] What is your justification for this statement?

The effects of physical force may or may not involve damage. In particular, fraud and breach of contract do not necessarily involve damage. But they do involve wrongful physical possession of property. We could quibble about whether some dirt and rock being moved constituted damage. If there is a danger of damage, that can make it physical force, even if there is no actual damage. I should have made clear that this refers to fraud and breach of contract. In other cases, the method can make it physical force.

The quotation said similarly, not the same. The physical force has to do with the effects, not the method. The OP asked if it was possible to consent to a violation of one's rights. A perpetrator of fraud would misleadingly claim to have received consent.

From the Ayn Rand lexicon: Fraud ¶ A unilateral breach of contract involves an indirect use of physical force: it consists, in essence, of one man receiving the material values, goods or services of another, then refusing to pay for them and thus keeping them by force (by mere physical possession), not by right—i.e., keeping them without the consent of their owner. Fraud involves a similarly indirect use of force: it consists of obtaining material values without their owner’s consent, under false pretenses or false promises. http://cultureofreason.org/style/img/thevirture.jpg “The Nature of Government,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 111

Fraud involves indirect use of force, because it involves getting physical possession of another's property and refusing to surrender it to its rightful owner.

Is it in a person's interests to live as a con artist if they can "get away with it"? Is it in a person's interests to live as a brigand if society is sufficiently nonfunctional that they can "get away with it"? No, and no. They get bad lives. It is much more workable and much more satisfactory to live in a world where as many people as possible are rational and free than to live in a world where reason and freedom are reserved for an elite and most people are subjugated and propagandized.

Left and Right are broad, sweeping umbrella terms that include different kinds of people. Any widely practiced religion, such as Christianity or Islam, is a broad umbrella that includes different kinds of people. I mention this because you speak of Muslims wanting to kill people. Some do and some don't, as is true of Christians, Rightists, and Leftists.

If a person exempts a property owner from liability, that does not necessarily mean that they permit anyone to engage in reckless behavior.

Drunk drivers normally don't have "sinister motives" and normally don't deliberately want to cause accidents or deaths. But they are still endangering people in a way that amounts to an initiation of physical force.