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Covid Passports

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Amit

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Hey guys,

I am trying to formulate a coherent opinion about the covid passports (that prevent unvaccinated people from entering public spaces).

In an argument with a friend, he said that those passports are like sanctions against drunk drivers:

Drunk drivers did not yet cause harm to anyone, and not all drunk drivers cause harm, but statistically speaking they can cause more damage therefore society should prevent them from being on the road.

In the same manner, unvaccinated people are statistically more infectious, therefore society should prevent them from going in crowds.

I am sure that this is not the first time you have heard this argument, but usually people just brush it off. What do you think about this argument?

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  • 3 months later...

This argument implies the jabs are sterilizing vaccines.

If we are talking about Ebola and there were a sterilizing vaccine I doubt much ‘coersion’ would be necessary. 

With these vaccines and this contagion , vax passports aren’t a health measure , that premise is just an excuse for centralizing data and any and all power that would accrue to the ‘authorities’ that collected it.

Why would individuals need the power of government to protect themselves , if vaccines ‘worked’ ? Getting vaccinated would confer protection.

 If the vaccines don’t ‘work’ how does distinguishing ‘vax status’ among individuals provide any added protection above common sense and risk analysis?

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8 hours ago, tadmjones said:

This argument implies the jabs are sterilizing vaccines.

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.

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10 hours ago, tadmjones said:

This argument implies the jabs are sterilizing vaccines.

If we are talking about Ebola and there were a sterilizing vaccine I doubt much ‘coersion’ would be necessary. 

With these vaccines and this contagion , vax passports aren’t a health measure , that premise is just an excuse for centralizing data and any and all power that would accrue to the ‘authorities’ that collected it.

Why would individuals need the power of government to protect themselves , if vaccines ‘worked’ ? Getting vaccinated would confer protection.

 If the vaccines don’t ‘work’ how does distinguishing ‘vax status’ among individuals provide any added protection above common sense and risk analysis?

Vaccines work, but not 100%.  Thus your argument breaks down.

1 hour ago, Easy Truth said:

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?

The point is not to force a utopia on people, but to prevent them from unnecessarily endangering people, the same as with drunk drivers.  Laws against drunk driving are not aimed at establishing a utopia in which nobody ever gets drunk, nor a utopia in which nobody ever abuses alcohol, nor any utopia.

1 hour ago, Easy Truth said:

The unvaxxed are now the new version of the sewer rats of the Nazi's. They're not people anymore.

Serious exaggeration.

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1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:
2 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

The unvaxxed are now the new version of the sewer rats of the Nazi's. They're not people anymore.

Serious exaggeration.

Not from what I have seen. I have seen father's look at the son who is not vaxxed as an irresponsible scum. I have seen professors that want to wait and see. I have seen people get fired simply because they don't want to get vaccinated for a disease that only is dangerous to people above 65 (statistically and reasonably speaking). No exaggeration.

Instead of the dictatorship of the proletariat, we have the dictatorships of the elderly.

But the discrimination and the dehumanization is serious and not taken seriously (because it's an exaggeration)!

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1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:

but to prevent them from unnecessarily endangering people

"unnecessarily endangering people", now is this an exaggeration when you look at the percentage of people it kills, especially nowadays with the treatments that are available. I would rail against socialized medicine that does not allow for the treatments to be widely available and sooner.

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6 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

Vaccines work, but not 100%.  Thus your argument breaks down.

The point is not to force a utopia on people, but to prevent them from unnecessarily endangering people, the same as with drunk drivers.  Laws against drunk driving are not aimed at establishing a utopia in which nobody ever gets drunk, nor a utopia in which nobody ever abuses alcohol, nor any utopia.

Serious exaggeration.

My argument is that covid vaccines do not work to meaningfully slow transmission, so what use is a vaccine verification system? It could or may be useful if they showed a high 'enough' efficacy against transmission.

Even if the jabs were highly associated with transmission reduction, covid isn't a life threatening disease to the majority of society. It shouldn't be a question if people living their day to day lives unnecessarily endangers others, it should be what level of necessary risks are those most endangered by the disease willing to take.

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The prevalence of break-through cases?

As to the OP , since we agree that the COVID vaccines aren’t “100 %”, how would a system that identifies vaccine status work to provide added protection against infection among the vaccinated?

I assume your argument would be that barring unvaccinated people from ‘polite society’ lessens the risk to those who responsibly vaccinated themselves.

But given that any individual regardless of vax status could be contagious at any given time , wouldn’t a real time test be a more reliable indication of ‘safety’?

Is a system that operates based solely on vaccine status reliable ‘enough’ for the privacy rights and freedom of association rights violations such a system would confer ?

I take the question in the OP assumes that vax passports in themselves are a proven medical safety measure , and proven to a degree that would necessitate relinquishing certain civil rights enjoyment , ie that violations of the policy would merit criminal and or civil repercussions.

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4 hours ago, tadmjones said:

The prevalence of break-through cases?

This proves that vaccines do not completely stop transmission.  It proves nothing about whether vaccines work to meaningfully slow transmission.

4 hours ago, tadmjones said:

As to the OP , since we agree that the COVID vaccines aren’t “100 %”, how would a system that identifies vaccine status work to provide added protection against infection among the vaccinated?

You seem to be assuming that COVID-19 vaccines are "0 %", which is certainly not true.

4 hours ago, tadmjones said:

But given that any individual regardless of vax status could be contagious at any given time , wouldn’t a real time test be a more reliable indication of ‘safety’?

If real time tests are sufficiently available, it would make sense to use them in addition or instead.

 

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35 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:

It proves nothing about whether vaccines work to meaningfully slow transmission.

Would you agree that people who are vaccinated and those who are not "shed" similar amounts of the virus when they are infected?

(I showed studies that show that)

So your argument will rest on vaccines decrease likelihood of being infected in the first place. Is that correct?

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16 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

Would you agree that people who are vaccinated and those who are not "shed" similar amounts of the virus when they are infected?

(I showed studies that show that)

Does this take into account the distinction between shedding infectious viruses and shedding non-infectious viral remnants?

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22 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

Would you agree that people who are vaccinated and those who are not "shed" similar amounts of the virus when they are infected?

(I showed studies that show that)

Here is a study that contradicts you.

 

Vaccinated people with breakthrough COVID infections had ...

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1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:

Does this take into account the distinction between shedding infectious viruses and shedding non-infectious viral remnants?

What test makes this distinction among samples ?

The caveats at the end of the article you linked basically says that this distinction was not accessible for their study.

 

 

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35 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

Again, you are conflating prevention with meaningful slowing.

That whole statement seems meaningless because prevention is in fact "meaningful slowing".

Again there still is no definition  of what percent of lethality of the virus … lockdowns and authoritarian techniques become justified. Kind of like there is an objective delineation of when to give up one's right's.

What if someone said "you're not being meaningfully reasonable"? The word "meaningful" seems to be a way to bring in an arbitrary and make it sound good.

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20 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

That whole statement seems meaningless because prevention is in fact "meaningful slowing".

Again there still is no definition  of what percent of lethality of the virus … lockdowns and authoritarian techniques become justified. Kind of like there is an objective delineation of when to give up one's right's.

What if someone said "you're not being meaningfully reasonable"? The word "meaningful" seems to be a way to bring in an arbitrary and make it sound good.

Yes and it seems like the reasoning one would use to rationalize the fact they were gaslit, check your premises.

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Tadmjones is the one who introduced the word "meaningful" into this discussion (in adverb form) and therefore is the one who should define it.

The CDC director's statement makes clear that she is taking the word "prevention" to mean reducing risk to the point where the risk can be ignored.  I took tadmjones's phrase " to meaningfully slow transmission" to mean slowing transmission to an extent that makes the slowing worthwhile, which is clearly different from reducing risk to the point where the risk can be ignored.

33 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

lockdowns

Until your post, this thread had been about vaccination, not lockdowns.

 

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I objected to the OP based on the fact that a 'vaccine passport' scheme would be an infringement of civil rights based on the fact that the vaccines do not curtail transmission to a degree that ensures adherence to such a scheme would guarantee the alleged health benefit. So any phrasing should be viewed in that context.

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56 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

ensures adherence to such a scheme would guarantee the alleged health benefit.

So you want a guarantee.  Might that be too stringent a requirement?

57 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

the alleged health benefit

I don't know what you consider to be the alleged health benefit.  What I am saying is that if staying unvaccinated creates too much risk, this justifies the mandate.

It is legitimate to outlaw drunk driving because it creates too much risk, even though any given instance of drunk driving may not do harm, and even though people will still die in traffic accidents due to other causes.

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We keep bouncing back and forth between the general and the particular, between the abstract and the concrete.

IF there were such as thing as an objectively provable safe and effective vaccine for a communicable disease that poses a severe health threat to the majority of a population, one that can be proven to only confer the recipient with perfect immunity and no other biological outcomes: a mandate for its requirement to participate in the general/common market place would be plausible in a society based on the protection of individual rights.

But as I have claimed since the 'beginning' of the covid pandemic , this 'disease' and the current slate of 'vaccines' do not meet those standards.

The comparison to dui/dwi isn't analogous because self intoxication is a volitional act.

Edited by tadmjones
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48 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

IF there were such as thing as an objectively provable safe and effective vaccine for a communicable disease that poses a severe health threat to the majority of a population, one that can be proven to only confer the recipient with perfect immunity and no other biological outcomes: a mandate for its requirement to participate in the general/common market place would be plausible in a society based on the protection of individual rights.

Are you sure that this is what you meant to say?

50 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

The comparison to dui/dwi isn't analogous because self intoxication is a volitional act.

The laws against drunk driving are aimed at the endangering, not the intoxication.  They do not apply to someone who gets drunk but doesn't drive.  If someone has liquor poured down their throat against their will, so that they have to swallow or drown, and they become intoxicated thereby, it should still be illegal for them to drive.  It is right to forbid someone to drive who has lost their ability to drive safely because of effects of old age, even though aging is not a volitional act.

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