I've covered previously that I've spent a long time in the healthcare industry, on both the provider and payor sides. Everyone, in the US at least, has heard of things their insurance doesn't...
I've covered previously that I've spent a long time in the healthcare industry, on both the provider and payor sides. Everyone, in the US at least, has heard of things their insurance doesn't cover. I'm fully expecting COVID treatment, especially hospitalizations, to start entering the list of non-coverage if the subscriber isn't vaccinated for reasons other than medical exemptions. They could do so on the individual policy level or on the coverage determinations level. The latter can be done at any time, the former I can see them issuing notice soon and it going into effect when policies reset on Jan 1.
I can damn-near-guarantee that the actuaries and their models at the insurance companies have looked at how much they're paying for anit-vaxxers and we're headed into policy renewal time for employer provided health insurance. I'd be surprised if conversations haven't occurred between some companies and their insurance reps with a neat little page that shows the higher premium for next year if they cover unvaccinated and a much lower one if they don't. Just as they charge higher premiums if you smoke tobacco.
I’m wondering what the ACA would allow? Yes, it does allow insurance companies to charge smokers more, but I think that’s a special exception? It would make sense to do something like that for...
I’m wondering what the ACA would allow?
Yes, it does allow insurance companies to charge smokers more, but I think that’s a special exception? It would make sense to do something like that for vaccinations, perhaps worded as a discount rather than a surcharge. But I suspect that changing the rules might be difficult?
I wouldn’t expect non-coverage. Smokers get treated.
I believe it would. Payors often have exclusions for high-risk pursuits such as skydiving, health insurance subscriber contracts often contain "source-of-injury" exclusions. One such high-profile...
I’m wondering what the ACA would allow?
I believe it would. Payors often have exclusions for high-risk pursuits such as skydiving, health insurance subscriber contracts often contain "source-of-injury" exclusions. One such high-profile exclusion was treatment for injuries after an attempted suicide, but that was nixed post-ACA because the injuries are often the result of a medical condition (read: mental illness/depression).
So they most certainly can exclude it, ICD-10 has opened up source-of-injury tracking to make it easier to deny, and the only real way the ACA would protect anti-vaxxers from the policy is for them to be diagnosed as mentally ill.
On the subject of mental illness...
While not every anti-vaxxer is a republican gun nut, the venn-diagram of anti-vaxxers/maskers/COVID-deniers and right wing politics has a hell of a lot of overlap. Know what you can't legally possess if you've been diagnosed with a mental illness?
In a normal situation, I would have less problem with people attending to their own vaccination status. But in the current pandemic, it's like firing a gun into the air on New Year's. It doesn't...
In a normal situation, I would have no less problem with people attending to their own vaccination status. But in the current pandemic, it's like firing a gun into the air on New Year's. It doesn't matter whether you intended that shot to hit somebody, there's a damn good chance it can.
It's little different to me than having sex with someone when you're HIV-positive without informing them, with one critical exception: they still chose to have sex (they wouldn't have without that omission, but still). Sex is not a human need in the same way breathing is. Only half the country is vaccinated. Flip a coin every time you see a person in a store, or in a restaurant, or at your place of business.
I disagree. Research has shown that punishments have little effect on people deciding on vaccinations. Source I disagree with a mandate on the vaccine. Everyone should be offered a vaccination but...
I disagree. Research has shown that punishments have little effect on people deciding on vaccinations.
People shouldn’t come to the vaccine; the vaccine should come to them. That’s the shortest way to put it, according to scientists of the Cosmo project, who have done a recent survey. “Visiting Vaccination” they call such offers which should exist in apothecaries, via vaccination bus or at universities and schools. Those places would be preferred by people the most as an alternative to vaccine centres or doctor’s practices, those are the newest results of the project, which is a result of the cooperation of the university of Erfurt, the Robert Koch-Institute and the Yale institute for global health in the past year. The make vaccination as simple as possible: That’s the most important thing which would lead to more vaccinations.
Other measures have little effect, the scientists discovered. Even a pretty high financial incentive of EUR 1000 “only increased the willingness to vaccinate by about 6 percent”, said the psychologist Sarah Eitze, a member of Cosmo. Benefits for the vaccinated, like being able to visit the cinema or theatre without a test, “don’t a positive effect on the decision to vaccinate”. How about punishments? From the entire spectrum of possibilities it’s the worst one, says Eitze, “It might even backfire and lead to a negative effect on the people currently considering”.
I disagree with a mandate on the vaccine. Everyone should be offered a vaccination but if they take it should be up to them, and once everyone has been offered the vaccine, restrictions don't really make sense anymore. Restricting public life to unvaccinated people will only go further in dividing the population. It's like people have forgotten that this is still an emergency situation and these are still restrictions of our rights, not privileges for the state to dole out.
I didn't read the article as trying to punish people into getting a vaccine. It's about shifting the burdens of the pandemic to them, instead of punishing everyone equally. I'm not sure I agree...
I didn't read the article as trying to punish people into getting a vaccine. It's about shifting the burdens of the pandemic to them, instead of punishing everyone equally.
I'm not sure I agree with the specific method outlined here, but I agree with the basic sentiment. I'm pretty tired of vaccinated people having to go with extra precautions because of the unvaccinated.
Do the intentions matter if the effect is the same? No matter how you view it, you're ultimately restricting access to services based on someone's vaccination status on a federal level. Keep...
Do the intentions matter if the effect is the same?
No matter how you view it, you're ultimately restricting access to services based on someone's vaccination status on a federal level. Keep increasing those restrictions, and eventually you'll have arrived at a conclusion where people have to get vaccinated to take part in public life in any sensible format, essentially equating a vaccine mandate. Add to that failures on the executive level, where people who cannot get vaccinated might get thrown into the mix because shit like that always happens, and in the end you have a complete clusterfuck.
The fear that some people have of this disease is honestly staggering, they treat it like the black death. Do we want this shit to continue forever? I'd like to add here that I'm generally pro-vaccine, but I take the stance that once everyone, and I mean everyone, had a legitimate chance to get it and for it to take full effect, any further restrictions make no sense. Remember that the idea of the lockdowns were to ease the burden on our healthcare systems, and yet decisions seem to be made purely on infection numbers and not hospitalizations.
I’m in full agreement. Today in America you’re either fully vaccinated or willingly unvaccinated. I won’t protect people that are in a death cult. Edit: I forgot about children
I’m in full agreement. Today in America you’re either fully vaccinated or willingly unvaccinated. I won’t protect people that are in a death cult.
It doesn't have to be about convincing them to get vaccinated, just limiting where they can spread the disease. Banning unvaccinated people from air planes would surely limit how much the virus...
It doesn't have to be about convincing them to get vaccinated, just limiting where they can spread the disease. Banning unvaccinated people from air planes would surely limit how much the virus spreads there even if those people don't end up choosing to get their shots.
Restrictions still totally make sense, even after everyone's had the opportunity to get vaccinated. In the US we're nowhere near herd immunity levels, so giving the virus free reign to spread is...
Restrictions still totally make sense, even after everyone's had the opportunity to get vaccinated. In the US we're nowhere near herd immunity levels, so giving the virus free reign to spread is just providing countless totally unnecessary opportunities for further mutations to develop. Right now the vaccinated can be reasonably assured that catching existing variants won't result in death, but it just seems irresponsible after so much effort, loss, and suffering to just cross our fingers and hope nothing bad will happen when we can be reasonably sure it will, and know exactly why.
Yes, but the problem is that not enough people want to get vaccinated, so we will not reach herd immunity any time soon. We're looking at years of keeping these restrictions in place. Meanwhile...
Yes, but the problem is that not enough people want to get vaccinated, so we will not reach herd immunity any time soon. We're looking at years of keeping these restrictions in place. Meanwhile the lockdowns and shutdowns of life have adverse effects of their own! The last school year was essentially worthless when it comes to actually learning new things, the entertainment sector is on life support and restaurants are currently scrambling left and right to hire people because everyone couldn't deal with the insecurity of the constant openings and closings. Especially if you only allow people to meet in certain times of the day, it might actually increase the amount of exposure. Unless you're suggesting a complete shutdown of social life and everyone staying inside, in which case we'll just have to say let's agree to disagree.
Lockdowns aren't a cure-all pill for Covid. They are a drastic measure with severe side-effects on life in the same way we only know how to treat cancer by poisoning the body. Except it's not cancer, it's Corona.
I actually agree with you on those points. We're not going to reach herd immunity any time soon because everyone has had the opportunity and they're turning it down. Which, to my thinking, means...
I actually agree with you on those points. We're not going to reach herd immunity any time soon because everyone has had the opportunity and they're turning it down. Which, to my thinking, means we have four options:
No longer impose restrictions and roll the dice on a vaccine-resistant mutation putting us right back at February 2020 and re-endangering everyone who has been responsible
Impose restrictions and lockdowns, adversely affecting our society in the ways you listed above
Incentivize vaccination and/or make being unvaccinated inconvenient to such a degree that we actually reach numbers where we no longer need to worry about either of those outcomes
Straight vaccine mandate
I can't speak to how things are between the vaccinated and unvaccinated in other countries, but at least in the US there's very little patience left for people who have been acting antisocial and pissing in the swimming pool in the name of freedom. There's a saying "your rights end where my nose begins." It had nothing to do with airborne illness, but I think it accurately reflects the feelings of a lot of people trying to act in their own and their childrens' interests while an abrasive portion of their society carelessly endangers them and gleefully rubs it in their face.
I have second-hand exposure to the school system during COVID, specifically elementary school (USA). It is very disingenuous to say that the last year was useless. For the teachers and students...
The last school year was essentially worthless when it comes to actually learning new things
I have second-hand exposure to the school system during COVID, specifically elementary school (USA). It is very disingenuous to say that the last year was useless. For the teachers and students that didn’t want to or couldn’t adapt, this statement is true. For the people who did adapt, it was a very productive year. I know many teachers who say that last year had just as much student growth as normal years, just for a different type of student. Remote education is going to be part of the future of education, despite the old codgers in the school system trying to sabotage it because it doesn’t work for them.
Education is by far not the only thing that happens at school. Socialization does too. So do sports. Yeah cool, what about the other types of students? Just because people hold on to certain...
Education is by far not the only thing that happens at school. Socialization does too. So do sports.
I know many teachers who say that last year had just as much student growth as normal years, just for a different type of student.
Yeah cool, what about the other types of students?
Remote education is going to be part of the future of education, despite the old codgers in the school system trying to sabotage it because it doesn’t work for them.
Just because people hold on to certain methods of teaching does not mean they are trying to sabotage things. They might've tried both and figured out a certain way works better for them. It's a bit of a hostile way of phrasing things.
Saying last school year was worthless is also a hostile way of phrasing things, by the way. Not trying to snipe your comment -- just pointing out that it goes both ways. Teachers last year did the...
Exemplary
Saying last school year was worthless is also a hostile way of phrasing things, by the way. Not trying to snipe your comment -- just pointing out that it goes both ways. Teachers last year did the best they could with a difficult situation. Students last year did the best they could with a difficult situation. Parents last year did the best they could with a difficult situation. There were no good or easy answers. There still aren't. Watching people pretend that it's simple is frustrating, and watching people casually dismiss the efforts of every single teacher, child, and parent out there even moreso. If I came on this site and dismissed an entire profession wholesale -- say, "programmers were essentially worthless last year" -- I'd have my ass handed to me, and rightfully so, but for some reason much of the internet feels comfortable doing that to education without batting an eye.
What is the "right" call is highly variable. There is no one-size-fits all solution. Twelve different schools could have twelve different "best" solutions because of different locations, situations, needs, age ranges, access to resources, etc. We cannot apply one-size-fits-all thinking to say that remote learning is universally bad/good or in-person is universally bad/good. The traditional wisdom says that in-person learning is best, but in-person schools in my district had to shut down for a few days last year because they were unable to staff them due to quarantines and a lack of substitues. A more robust remote learning plan would have been the better option in that case, rather than abruptly shifting to remote with no warning. Likewise, there were other areas of the country with very low community transmission rates that could have changed to in-person learning and benefitted from that but chose to stay remote, which was the suboptimal choice for that situation.
Not uncommon. Disregarding pedagogical aspects entirely for the moment: many schools were not great places to be in last year. Students at my school were in masks all day, separate from one...
Not uncommon.
Disregarding pedagogical aspects entirely for the moment: many schools were not great places to be in last year. Students at my school were in masks all day, separate from one another, stuck in a single desk for almost their whole school day, in classrooms that had their windows open during the cold of winter. Contrast that with being at home where they could sit in a heated room wearing pajamas, relax in a comfortable chair, move around and fidget without disrupting others, eat snacks, pet their dog, etc.
Plus coming to school in-person meant that many students either worried about getting COVID themselves or getting it and spreading it to their families. Also, due to distancing requirements, many students who were in-person at school were not physically located in the same room as their teachers, so they were essentially getting the worst of both worlds: being in school with all its restrictions AND doing full-remote learning, since their only access to instruction was via a screen. The at home experience was fundamentally more comfortable in a lot of ways.
Of course, similar to what I mentioned in my above comment, this is all highly variable. My experience is biased by the age range I teach. If I were a first or second grade teacher, for example, then the feelings and experiences of my students would likely be very different.
I'm not a student anymore, but I think merely removing the fear of getting beat up and humiliated by school bullies every day would probably improve my learning experience quite a bit.
I'm not a student anymore, but I think merely removing the fear of getting beat up and humiliated by school bullies every day would probably improve my learning experience quite a bit.
In the new school I am in, remote learning is basically such: The teachers send us a load of PDFs for the month We download the PDFs and put them wherever (I personally upload them to Google...
In the new school I am in, remote learning is basically such:
The teachers send us a load of PDFs for the month
We download the PDFs and put them wherever (I personally upload them to Google drive)
We then respond to whatever questions there are on the PDFs (usually, if the teachers don't request otherwise or some symbol isn't available in mobile keyboards) also in PDFs, thus mostly cutting out writing entirely.
When we're done for the month, we upload everything to a place they made for this.
(Occasionally we watch YouTube videos the teachers recommended in the PDFs explaining the things to us.)
In my experience (from the strictly educational side), this has been a fairly good model for us to study in, main problems being needing to download something new if it comes up and sticking to the deadlines given. This isn't how it is for everyone, in my old school it was quite different and a much worse experience, although some share of it was me being hardly willing to go through the lessons and upload the pages of the stuff I had copied or answered to the teachers, which is not the case now.
Yeah that's true. But I'm not dismissing long-distance learning outright, just as the primary way to teach students who are able to attend in-person themselves. And if we design teaching right, if...
Saying last school year was worthless is also a hostile way of phrasing things, by the way. Not trying to snipe your comment -- just pointing out that it goes both ways.
Yeah that's true. But I'm not dismissing long-distance learning outright, just as the primary way to teach students who are able to attend in-person themselves. And if we design teaching right, if we build schools right, we can get an overwhelming majority of kids to attend. Not having enough staff is one of the aspects that goes into designing it right. Being a teacher is one of the most vital jobs in society, and you should be respected more, paid more, and have more freedoms in how you design your curriculum. But alas, politics.
We have always left behind a subset of students with the way we setup schools and teaching. Now that those students who have been left behind their entire school career are excelling in online...
We have always left behind a subset of students with the way we setup schools and teaching. Now that those students who have been left behind their entire school career are excelling in online classes. And instead of trying to find a way to support those students, and those who don’t learn well online, the entire school year is being thrown out as a waste of time. As institutions of learning, the US public school system is very bad at learning how to teach.
Yes, the language I use is a bit hostile. However, the people who are currently entrenched are already hostile to change. I have literally seen school administration sabotage their own online teaching programs because they don’t believe it can work. They “know” it cannot work, and make damn sure that it is not successful.
How about, instead of writing off an entire year of education and learning, we as a society try and learn from it. Was school during COVID perfect? Absolutely not. Did it do some things better than existing schooling? Absolutely! Let’s try and find what was good and incorporate it into our future instead of throwing out the baby with the bath water.
A didn't interpret the article as advocating for a vaccine mandate per se. I think there are measures that could be enacted by the government to try to force people to get vaccinated. I also think...
A didn't interpret the article as advocating for a vaccine mandate per se.
I think there are measures that could be enacted by the government to try to force people to get vaccinated. I also think there are other measures that shift the burden of risk, as the OP is describing. And there is definitely a large overlap in that ven diagram, but I think the distinction in motivation is important.
Can you expand on this? What rights are being restricted to the unvaccinated?
It's like people have forgotten that this is still an emergency situation and these are still restrictions of our rights, not privileges for the state to dole out.
Can you expand on this?
What rights are being restricted to the unvaccinated?
Currently? None. The statement referred to the measures of the lockdown in general, shutdown of social life, certain culinary and cultural venues, et cetera.
Currently? None.
The statement referred to the measures of the lockdown in general, shutdown of social life, certain culinary and cultural venues, et cetera.
There’s a bit of a difference between police forcibly entering people’s homes to administer a vaccine and being denied access to businesses and services if you choose not get it.
There’s a bit of a difference between police forcibly entering people’s homes to administer a vaccine and being denied access to businesses and services if you choose not get it.
Turns out, forcing people to do things they don't want to do will backfire. I also really take issue with the phrasing of this article as unvaccinated people as a protected class. They're not!...
Turns out, forcing people to do things they don't want to do will backfire. I also really take issue with the phrasing of this article as unvaccinated people as a protected class. They're not! Everyone's rights have been cut down, we're simply cutting down the rights of certain people even more.
Actually, they are, and becoming moreso as more people become vaccinated. As more people get vaccinated, the only people who really need protection from the coronavirus are the people who are not...
I also really take issue with the phrasing of this article as unvaccinated people as a protected class. They're not!
Actually, they are, and becoming moreso as more people become vaccinated.
As more people get vaccinated, the only people who really need protection from the coronavirus are the people who are not vaccinated. They're the ones who will get sick from the coronavirus, and the ones who will end up in hospital, and the ones who will die. The vaccinated people won't get anything worse than a cold. The unvaccinated people can get severely ill and die. So, any restrictions (up to and including lockdowns) will be in place mainly to protect those unvaccinated people - because the vaccinated people don't need protection.
So all people must wear masks, and all people must put up with capacity limits in venues, and all people must deal with restrictions on everyday activities, and all people must endure lockdowns, just to protect the unvaccinated. They are becoming the protected class in our society: the people whom everyone else is having to protect.
That becomes extremely unfair as the group of unvaccinated people is narrowed down to those people who choose not to get vaccinated, rather than those people who can't get vaccinated. When all the people who want to be vaccinated, have been vaccinated, the only hold-outs will be the people who have knowingly and deliberately chosen to leave themselves unprotected. Everyone else has to either: shoulder the burden of protecting those people from the coronavirus, or; shoulder the burden of providing healthcare to those people. Both of those options are unfair when unvaccinated people chose to leave themselves unprotected.
It’s odd to read this sort of complaint now because as a vaccinated person, restrictions seem pretty light to me. It seems like wearing a mask while shopping wasn’t considered much of a burden by...
It’s odd to read this sort of complaint now because as a vaccinated person, restrictions seem pretty light to me. It seems like wearing a mask while shopping wasn’t considered much of a burden by people on the pro-mask side of the debate until recently? Also, eating out is a luxury. Takeout and buying convenience foods are reasonable substitutes.
The pandemic is not about fairness. Nobody deserves any of it.
Sorry, I assumed lockdown was a well-known concept, given how many jurisdictions around the world have been using it as a tool to suppress the pandemic. Here are some of the high points of what...
Sorry, I assumed lockdown was a well-known concept, given how many jurisdictions around the world have been using it as a tool to suppress the pandemic.
Here are some of the high points of what "in lockdown" means for me, here in Australia:
There are only 5 reasons to leave home: to get medical care; to do exercise (for a limited time per day); to obtain essential supplies; to perform essential work; to have a coronavirus test or vaccination.
All business must close to the public, except those businesses providing the aforementioned essential supplies. So, supermarkets can be open, but clothes shops, appliance shops, etc, must be closed. This includes sports facilities, such as gyms.
Non-essential retail and hospitality can operate, but only to provide take-away or delivery services.
All entertainment and sports and other public events must close.
Everyone who can do their work from home, should work from home.
No visitors allowed at people's homes.
A cap on the number of people allowed to gather in public spaces (e.g. 10 people can gather for a picnic, but no more than that).
There's more detail (some versions of lockdown include a limit on how far you can travel from your home), but that should give you a general idea. Currently, about 60% of the Australian population, in the three most populous states, are in some form of lockdown.
Yes, wasn’t sure I remembered correctly that you were from Australia, which is why I asked. People sometimes use “lockdown” very loosely in the US. During spring of last year, there was a time...
Yes, wasn’t sure I remembered correctly that you were from Australia, which is why I asked.
People sometimes use “lockdown” very loosely in the US. During spring of last year, there was a time when only “essential” businesses could be open, at least in California, but it’s been a long time since then and nothing like that is expected.
Vaccinations in Australia still seem to be low and supply-limited, so the US debates must look very strange from there.
The UK just ended a 5-month lockdown. And France had serious lockdowns, as did other European countries. And China famously locked down one city by welding apartment doors shut! Serious lockdowns...
Yes, wasn’t sure I remembered correctly that you were from Australia, which is why I asked.
The UK just ended a 5-month lockdown. And France had serious lockdowns, as did other European countries. And China famously locked down one city by welding apartment doors shut! Serious lockdowns aren't limited to Australia.
Vaccinations in Australia still seem to be low and supply-limited, so the US debates must look very strange from there.
Any debates in the USA about anything look strange from Australia (or from most other countries). 🙂 I've mostly learned to adjust.
However, I believe the basic principles of this argument apply both in the USA and in Australia: whatever restrictions are in place in both countries exist primarily to protected unvaccinated people from the effects of the coronavirus. Sure, the current rates of vaccination in each country might be different, but both countries are not yet at the point where everyone who wants a vaccination has had one, and both countries will end up at a point where the only people who haven't been vaccinated are people who choose not to be vaccinated (plus a tiny minority who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons). The ethical arguments about who should bear the burden of restrictions to protect the unvaccinated are still relevant to both countries.
Here in Australia, we have socialised healthcare, so I will end up paying via my tax for the healthcare of people who chose not to get vaccinated. Or I end up in lockdown to protect those same people from getting sick. Either way, I am bearing the burden of other people's choice not to get vaccinated.
That's also true in the USA, even if only because the people who don't get vaccinated will end up using hospital beds and medical expertise that are then not available to other sick people.
In both countries, the people who choose not to get vaccinated will end up putting a burden on everyone else - and that's unfair. It's their choice not to get vaccinated, so they should bear the burden of that choice. Not you. Not me. Them.
I think things change a lot depending on whether vaccinations are supply-limited or not: When supplies are limited, it doesn’t really matter if some people don’t want the vaccine as long as all...
I think things change a lot depending on whether vaccinations are supply-limited or not:
When supplies are limited, it doesn’t really matter if some people don’t want the vaccine as long as all the available vaccines are given out as quickly as possible. And because many are unprotected through no fault of their own, it makes sense to make common sacrifices to protect everyone.
Things change once supplies are plentiful. I still think wearing a mask while shopping isn’t a big deal, but having strict lockdowns to protect people who won’t protect themselves is a hard sell.
It’s more complicated than that because there are still children who aren’t eligible for vaccines yet, and people with weak immune systems for which vaccines are less effective. But I think these situations are distinct enough to be talked about separately.
(Also, strangely enough, vaccines being available in every pharmacy isn’t enough. Apparently there are people who will get vaccinated if you go door-to-door but won’t seek them out.)
I'm talking about the end-point, not the mid-point. Whether vaccines are supply-limited or not, we will eventually reach a time where everyone who wants to be vaccinated, has been vaccinated, and...
I think things change a lot depending on whether vaccinations are supply-limited or not:
I'm talking about the end-point, not the mid-point. Whether vaccines are supply-limited or not, we will eventually reach a time where everyone who wants to be vaccinated, has been vaccinated, and the remaining unvaccinated people will be mostly people who chose not to be vaccinated.
I still think wearing a mask while shopping isn’t a big deal, but having strict lockdowns to protect people who won’t protect themselves is a hard sell.
Agreed, on both counts. However, it is still true that these protective measures, whether masks or lockdowns, are mostly in place to protect unvaccinated people. And, as I said above, ultimately, most unvaccinated people will be people who chose not to be vaccinated.
Why should I put in any effort to protect people who won't protect themselves?
I didn’t say that. But much of the discussion is about current events and what should be done now (in the US, anyway) and we should probably avoid confusing that with what should be done later.
I didn’t say that. But much of the discussion is about current events and what should be done now (in the US, anyway) and we should probably avoid confusing that with what should be done later.
I understand where you're coming from, but why protect people who don't want to be protected? Someone who chooses not to get the vaccine usually scoffs at the safety measures anyway, then why keep...
I understand where you're coming from, but why protect people who don't want to be protected? Someone who chooses not to get the vaccine usually scoffs at the safety measures anyway, then why keep them up? You are coddling someone who does not want to be coddled, and in the process running society through a meatgrinder.
They're the ones who will get sick from the coronavirus, and the ones who will end up in hospital, and the ones who will die. The vaccinated people won't get anything worse than a cold. The unvaccinated people can get severely ill and die.
Because I haven't done so in a while, I just checked the current global Covid numbers. Of the ~16 million currently active cases, 99,4% are classified as a mild condition, while 0,4% are classified as severe. It looks to me like unecessary cause of fear. Yes, patients with corona can get severely ill and die, but of the ~187 million closed cases, 98% recovered, and 2% died. Covid can have long-lasting side-effects, but it is not the bubonic plague. A lot of conversations like this sound like the disease could be the end of humanity, but what we're most likely looking at is it becoming endemic.
Both of those options are unfair when unvaccinated people chose to leave themselves unprotected.
We provide healthcare to drunk drivers causing accidents. We provide healthcare to pyromaniacs who burn houses down. We provide healthcare to abusers, murderers, thieves, robbers and rapists. We provide it to all their victims too. It's not unfair, it's a human right.
If you read further down the thread, you'll see that I agree with you. It's not the bubonic plague. However, if we took no preventative measures, everybody would catch the coronavirus, and 2% of 7...
I understand where you're coming from, but why protect people who don't want to be protected? Someone who chooses not to get the vaccine usually scoffs at the safety measures anyway, then why keep them up?
Yes, patients with corona can get severely ill and die, but of the ~187 million closed cases, 98% recovered, and 2% died. Covid can have long-lasting side-effects, but it is not the bubonic plague.
It's not the bubonic plague. However, if we took no preventative measures, everybody would catch the coronavirus, and 2% of 7 billion people, or 140,000,000 people would die. That's more than 5 times the population of my home country, Australia. It might not be the end of the world, but it's still a lot of people.
I'm on the phone so please excuse the brevity. It is, but over what time period, and what people? The entire planet isn't going to get covid at the same time, there won't be a pile of corpses. It...
I'm on the phone so please excuse the brevity.
It's not the bubonic plague. However, if we took no preventative measures, everybody would catch the coronavirus, and 2% of 7 billion people, or 140,000,000 people would die. That's more than 5 times the population of my home country, Australia. It might not be the end of the world, but it's still a lot of people.
It is, but over what time period, and what people? The entire planet isn't going to get covid at the same time, there won't be a pile of corpses. It also begs the question of who actually dies to covid. Mortality rates soar among older folks especially, and they would've gotten the flu or an inflammation of the lungs or some other old people culling disease. Eventually, people die.
The other risk factors are unfortunate, but we won't find a quick solution to e.g. obesity.
Okay. So we should let the old people die. Do you have any grandparents still alive that you care about, and who you're willing to donate to the cause, so you can be free of restrictions and...
Okay. So we should let the old people die.
Do you have any grandparents still alive that you care about, and who you're willing to donate to the cause, so you can be free of restrictions and lockdowns?
Mortality rates soar among older folks especially, and they would've gotten the flu or an inflammation of the lungs or some other old people culling disease. Eventually, people die.
The headline, this summary, and the other comments here are framed in terms of a general principle, but the article is about a more specific question: should you be required to be vaccinated to...
The headline, this summary, and the other comments here are framed in terms of a general principle, but the article is about a more specific question: should you be required to be vaccinated to fly on a plane within the US?
It seems a bit odd that people just want to talk about the general principle and not about air travel.
I've covered previously that I've spent a long time in the healthcare industry, on both the provider and payor sides. Everyone, in the US at least, has heard of things their insurance doesn't cover. I'm fully expecting COVID treatment, especially hospitalizations, to start entering the list of non-coverage if the subscriber isn't vaccinated for reasons other than medical exemptions. They could do so on the individual policy level or on the coverage determinations level. The latter can be done at any time, the former I can see them issuing notice soon and it going into effect when policies reset on Jan 1.
I can damn-near-guarantee that the actuaries and their models at the insurance companies have looked at how much they're paying for anit-vaxxers and we're headed into policy renewal time for employer provided health insurance. I'd be surprised if conversations haven't occurred between some companies and their insurance reps with a neat little page that shows the higher premium for next year if they cover unvaccinated and a much lower one if they don't. Just as they charge higher premiums if you smoke tobacco.
I’m wondering what the ACA would allow?
Yes, it does allow insurance companies to charge smokers more, but I think that’s a special exception? It would make sense to do something like that for vaccinations, perhaps worded as a discount rather than a surcharge. But I suspect that changing the rules might be difficult?
I wouldn’t expect non-coverage. Smokers get treated.
I believe it would. Payors often have exclusions for high-risk pursuits such as skydiving, health insurance subscriber contracts often contain "source-of-injury" exclusions. One such high-profile exclusion was treatment for injuries after an attempted suicide, but that was nixed post-ACA because the injuries are often the result of a medical condition (read: mental illness/depression).
So they most certainly can exclude it, ICD-10 has opened up source-of-injury tracking to make it easier to deny, and the only real way the ACA would protect anti-vaxxers from the policy is for them to be diagnosed as mentally ill.
On the subject of mental illness...
While not every anti-vaxxer is a republican gun nut, the venn-diagram of anti-vaxxers/maskers/COVID-deniers and right wing politics has a hell of a lot of overlap. Know what you can't legally possess if you've been diagnosed with a mental illness?
Firearms
In a normal situation, I would have
noless problem with people attending to their own vaccination status. But in the current pandemic, it's like firing a gun into the air on New Year's. It doesn't matter whether you intended that shot to hit somebody, there's a damn good chance it can.It's little different to me than having sex with someone when you're HIV-positive without informing them, with one critical exception: they still chose to have sex (they wouldn't have without that omission, but still). Sex is not a human need in the same way breathing is. Only half the country is vaccinated. Flip a coin every time you see a person in a store, or in a restaurant, or at your place of business.
I disagree. Research has shown that punishments have little effect on people deciding on vaccinations.
Source
I disagree with a mandate on the vaccine. Everyone should be offered a vaccination but if they take it should be up to them, and once everyone has been offered the vaccine, restrictions don't really make sense anymore. Restricting public life to unvaccinated people will only go further in dividing the population. It's like people have forgotten that this is still an emergency situation and these are still restrictions of our rights, not privileges for the state to dole out.
I didn't read the article as trying to punish people into getting a vaccine. It's about shifting the burdens of the pandemic to them, instead of punishing everyone equally.
I'm not sure I agree with the specific method outlined here, but I agree with the basic sentiment. I'm pretty tired of vaccinated people having to go with extra precautions because of the unvaccinated.
Do the intentions matter if the effect is the same?
No matter how you view it, you're ultimately restricting access to services based on someone's vaccination status on a federal level. Keep increasing those restrictions, and eventually you'll have arrived at a conclusion where people have to get vaccinated to take part in public life in any sensible format, essentially equating a vaccine mandate. Add to that failures on the executive level, where people who cannot get vaccinated might get thrown into the mix because shit like that always happens, and in the end you have a complete clusterfuck.
The fear that some people have of this disease is honestly staggering, they treat it like the black death. Do we want this shit to continue forever? I'd like to add here that I'm generally pro-vaccine, but I take the stance that once everyone, and I mean everyone, had a legitimate chance to get it and for it to take full effect, any further restrictions make no sense. Remember that the idea of the lockdowns were to ease the burden on our healthcare systems, and yet decisions seem to be made purely on infection numbers and not hospitalizations.
Re: @Omnicrola
I’m in full agreement. Today in America you’re either fully vaccinated or willingly unvaccinated. I won’t protect people that are in a death cult.
Edit: I forgot about children
It doesn't have to be about convincing them to get vaccinated, just limiting where they can spread the disease. Banning unvaccinated people from air planes would surely limit how much the virus spreads there even if those people don't end up choosing to get their shots.
Restrictions still totally make sense, even after everyone's had the opportunity to get vaccinated. In the US we're nowhere near herd immunity levels, so giving the virus free reign to spread is just providing countless totally unnecessary opportunities for further mutations to develop. Right now the vaccinated can be reasonably assured that catching existing variants won't result in death, but it just seems irresponsible after so much effort, loss, and suffering to just cross our fingers and hope nothing bad will happen when we can be reasonably sure it will, and know exactly why.
Yes, but the problem is that not enough people want to get vaccinated, so we will not reach herd immunity any time soon. We're looking at years of keeping these restrictions in place. Meanwhile the lockdowns and shutdowns of life have adverse effects of their own! The last school year was essentially worthless when it comes to actually learning new things, the entertainment sector is on life support and restaurants are currently scrambling left and right to hire people because everyone couldn't deal with the insecurity of the constant openings and closings. Especially if you only allow people to meet in certain times of the day, it might actually increase the amount of exposure. Unless you're suggesting a complete shutdown of social life and everyone staying inside, in which case we'll just have to say let's agree to disagree.
Lockdowns aren't a cure-all pill for Covid. They are a drastic measure with severe side-effects on life in the same way we only know how to treat cancer by poisoning the body. Except it's not cancer, it's Corona.
I actually agree with you on those points. We're not going to reach herd immunity any time soon because everyone has had the opportunity and they're turning it down. Which, to my thinking, means we have four options:
I can't speak to how things are between the vaccinated and unvaccinated in other countries, but at least in the US there's very little patience left for people who have been acting antisocial and pissing in the swimming pool in the name of freedom. There's a saying "your rights end where my nose begins." It had nothing to do with airborne illness, but I think it accurately reflects the feelings of a lot of people trying to act in their own and their childrens' interests while an abrasive portion of their society carelessly endangers them and gleefully rubs it in their face.
I have second-hand exposure to the school system during COVID, specifically elementary school (USA). It is very disingenuous to say that the last year was useless. For the teachers and students that didn’t want to or couldn’t adapt, this statement is true. For the people who did adapt, it was a very productive year. I know many teachers who say that last year had just as much student growth as normal years, just for a different type of student. Remote education is going to be part of the future of education, despite the old codgers in the school system trying to sabotage it because it doesn’t work for them.
Education is by far not the only thing that happens at school. Socialization does too. So do sports.
Yeah cool, what about the other types of students?
Just because people hold on to certain methods of teaching does not mean they are trying to sabotage things. They might've tried both and figured out a certain way works better for them. It's a bit of a hostile way of phrasing things.
Saying last school year was worthless is also a hostile way of phrasing things, by the way. Not trying to snipe your comment -- just pointing out that it goes both ways. Teachers last year did the best they could with a difficult situation. Students last year did the best they could with a difficult situation. Parents last year did the best they could with a difficult situation. There were no good or easy answers. There still aren't. Watching people pretend that it's simple is frustrating, and watching people casually dismiss the efforts of every single teacher, child, and parent out there even moreso. If I came on this site and dismissed an entire profession wholesale -- say, "programmers were essentially worthless last year" -- I'd have my ass handed to me, and rightfully so, but for some reason much of the internet feels comfortable doing that to education without batting an eye.
What is the "right" call is highly variable. There is no one-size-fits all solution. Twelve different schools could have twelve different "best" solutions because of different locations, situations, needs, age ranges, access to resources, etc. We cannot apply one-size-fits-all thinking to say that remote learning is universally bad/good or in-person is universally bad/good. The traditional wisdom says that in-person learning is best, but in-person schools in my district had to shut down for a few days last year because they were unable to staff them due to quarantines and a lack of substitues. A more robust remote learning plan would have been the better option in that case, rather than abruptly shifting to remote with no warning. Likewise, there were other areas of the country with very low community transmission rates that could have changed to in-person learning and benefitted from that but chose to stay remote, which was the suboptimal choice for that situation.
I’ve seen a few anecdotes about kids who actually enjoyed being able to study at home. I wonder how common that is?
Not uncommon.
Disregarding pedagogical aspects entirely for the moment: many schools were not great places to be in last year. Students at my school were in masks all day, separate from one another, stuck in a single desk for almost their whole school day, in classrooms that had their windows open during the cold of winter. Contrast that with being at home where they could sit in a heated room wearing pajamas, relax in a comfortable chair, move around and fidget without disrupting others, eat snacks, pet their dog, etc.
Plus coming to school in-person meant that many students either worried about getting COVID themselves or getting it and spreading it to their families. Also, due to distancing requirements, many students who were in-person at school were not physically located in the same room as their teachers, so they were essentially getting the worst of both worlds: being in school with all its restrictions AND doing full-remote learning, since their only access to instruction was via a screen. The at home experience was fundamentally more comfortable in a lot of ways.
Of course, similar to what I mentioned in my above comment, this is all highly variable. My experience is biased by the age range I teach. If I were a first or second grade teacher, for example, then the feelings and experiences of my students would likely be very different.
I'm not a student anymore, but I think merely removing the fear of getting beat up and humiliated by school bullies every day would probably improve my learning experience quite a bit.
In the new school I am in, remote learning is basically such:
The teachers send us a load of PDFs for the month
We download the PDFs and put them wherever (I personally upload them to Google drive)
We then respond to whatever questions there are on the PDFs (usually, if the teachers don't request otherwise or some symbol isn't available in mobile keyboards) also in PDFs, thus mostly cutting out writing entirely.
When we're done for the month, we upload everything to a place they made for this.
(Occasionally we watch YouTube videos the teachers recommended in the PDFs explaining the things to us.)
In my experience (from the strictly educational side), this has been a fairly good model for us to study in, main problems being needing to download something new if it comes up and sticking to the deadlines given. This isn't how it is for everyone, in my old school it was quite different and a much worse experience, although some share of it was me being hardly willing to go through the lessons and upload the pages of the stuff I had copied or answered to the teachers, which is not the case now.
Yeah that's true. But I'm not dismissing long-distance learning outright, just as the primary way to teach students who are able to attend in-person themselves. And if we design teaching right, if we build schools right, we can get an overwhelming majority of kids to attend. Not having enough staff is one of the aspects that goes into designing it right. Being a teacher is one of the most vital jobs in society, and you should be respected more, paid more, and have more freedoms in how you design your curriculum. But alas, politics.
We have always left behind a subset of students with the way we setup schools and teaching. Now that those students who have been left behind their entire school career are excelling in online classes. And instead of trying to find a way to support those students, and those who don’t learn well online, the entire school year is being thrown out as a waste of time. As institutions of learning, the US public school system is very bad at learning how to teach.
Yes, the language I use is a bit hostile. However, the people who are currently entrenched are already hostile to change. I have literally seen school administration sabotage their own online teaching programs because they don’t believe it can work. They “know” it cannot work, and make damn sure that it is not successful.
How about, instead of writing off an entire year of education and learning, we as a society try and learn from it. Was school during COVID perfect? Absolutely not. Did it do some things better than existing schooling? Absolutely! Let’s try and find what was good and incorporate it into our future instead of throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Given we’ve hit a cap of vaccinations the quickest way to herd immunity is to allow the unvaccinated to get themselves infected.
A didn't interpret the article as advocating for a vaccine mandate per se.
I think there are measures that could be enacted by the government to try to force people to get vaccinated. I also think there are other measures that shift the burden of risk, as the OP is describing. And there is definitely a large overlap in that ven diagram, but I think the distinction in motivation is important.
Can you expand on this?
What rights are being restricted to the unvaccinated?
Currently? None.
The statement referred to the measures of the lockdown in general, shutdown of social life, certain culinary and cultural venues, et cetera.
We tried mandatory vaccinnation once. Didn't go too well.
There’s a bit of a difference between police forcibly entering people’s homes to administer a vaccine and being denied access to businesses and services if you choose not get it.
Turns out, forcing people to do things they don't want to do will backfire. I also really take issue with the phrasing of this article as unvaccinated people as a protected class. They're not! Everyone's rights have been cut down, we're simply cutting down the rights of certain people even more.
Actually, they are, and becoming moreso as more people become vaccinated.
As more people get vaccinated, the only people who really need protection from the coronavirus are the people who are not vaccinated. They're the ones who will get sick from the coronavirus, and the ones who will end up in hospital, and the ones who will die. The vaccinated people won't get anything worse than a cold. The unvaccinated people can get severely ill and die. So, any restrictions (up to and including lockdowns) will be in place mainly to protect those unvaccinated people - because the vaccinated people don't need protection.
So all people must wear masks, and all people must put up with capacity limits in venues, and all people must deal with restrictions on everyday activities, and all people must endure lockdowns, just to protect the unvaccinated. They are becoming the protected class in our society: the people whom everyone else is having to protect.
That becomes extremely unfair as the group of unvaccinated people is narrowed down to those people who choose not to get vaccinated, rather than those people who can't get vaccinated. When all the people who want to be vaccinated, have been vaccinated, the only hold-outs will be the people who have knowingly and deliberately chosen to leave themselves unprotected. Everyone else has to either: shoulder the burden of protecting those people from the coronavirus, or; shoulder the burden of providing healthcare to those people. Both of those options are unfair when unvaccinated people chose to leave themselves unprotected.
It’s odd to read this sort of complaint now because as a vaccinated person, restrictions seem pretty light to me. It seems like wearing a mask while shopping wasn’t considered much of a burden by people on the pro-mask side of the debate until recently? Also, eating out is a luxury. Takeout and buying convenience foods are reasonable substitutes.
The pandemic is not about fairness. Nobody deserves any of it.
As someone who is now up to a cumulative total of 188 days in lockdown (and counting!), the restrictions don't seem pretty light to me.
Can you explain what you mean by “in lockdown?” What are things like where you live?
Sorry, I assumed lockdown was a well-known concept, given how many jurisdictions around the world have been using it as a tool to suppress the pandemic.
Here are some of the high points of what "in lockdown" means for me, here in Australia:
There are only 5 reasons to leave home: to get medical care; to do exercise (for a limited time per day); to obtain essential supplies; to perform essential work; to have a coronavirus test or vaccination.
All business must close to the public, except those businesses providing the aforementioned essential supplies. So, supermarkets can be open, but clothes shops, appliance shops, etc, must be closed. This includes sports facilities, such as gyms.
Non-essential retail and hospitality can operate, but only to provide take-away or delivery services.
All entertainment and sports and other public events must close.
Everyone who can do their work from home, should work from home.
No visitors allowed at people's homes.
A cap on the number of people allowed to gather in public spaces (e.g. 10 people can gather for a picnic, but no more than that).
There's more detail (some versions of lockdown include a limit on how far you can travel from your home), but that should give you a general idea. Currently, about 60% of the Australian population, in the three most populous states, are in some form of lockdown.
Yes, wasn’t sure I remembered correctly that you were from Australia, which is why I asked.
People sometimes use “lockdown” very loosely in the US. During spring of last year, there was a time when only “essential” businesses could be open, at least in California, but it’s been a long time since then and nothing like that is expected.
Vaccinations in Australia still seem to be low and supply-limited, so the US debates must look very strange from there.
The UK just ended a 5-month lockdown. And France had serious lockdowns, as did other European countries. And China famously locked down one city by welding apartment doors shut! Serious lockdowns aren't limited to Australia.
Any debates in the USA about anything look strange from Australia (or from most other countries). 🙂 I've mostly learned to adjust.
However, I believe the basic principles of this argument apply both in the USA and in Australia: whatever restrictions are in place in both countries exist primarily to protected unvaccinated people from the effects of the coronavirus. Sure, the current rates of vaccination in each country might be different, but both countries are not yet at the point where everyone who wants a vaccination has had one, and both countries will end up at a point where the only people who haven't been vaccinated are people who choose not to be vaccinated (plus a tiny minority who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons). The ethical arguments about who should bear the burden of restrictions to protect the unvaccinated are still relevant to both countries.
Here in Australia, we have socialised healthcare, so I will end up paying via my tax for the healthcare of people who chose not to get vaccinated. Or I end up in lockdown to protect those same people from getting sick. Either way, I am bearing the burden of other people's choice not to get vaccinated.
That's also true in the USA, even if only because the people who don't get vaccinated will end up using hospital beds and medical expertise that are then not available to other sick people.
In both countries, the people who choose not to get vaccinated will end up putting a burden on everyone else - and that's unfair. It's their choice not to get vaccinated, so they should bear the burden of that choice. Not you. Not me. Them.
I think things change a lot depending on whether vaccinations are supply-limited or not:
When supplies are limited, it doesn’t really matter if some people don’t want the vaccine as long as all the available vaccines are given out as quickly as possible. And because many are unprotected through no fault of their own, it makes sense to make common sacrifices to protect everyone.
Things change once supplies are plentiful. I still think wearing a mask while shopping isn’t a big deal, but having strict lockdowns to protect people who won’t protect themselves is a hard sell.
It’s more complicated than that because there are still children who aren’t eligible for vaccines yet, and people with weak immune systems for which vaccines are less effective. But I think these situations are distinct enough to be talked about separately.
(Also, strangely enough, vaccines being available in every pharmacy isn’t enough. Apparently there are people who will get vaccinated if you go door-to-door but won’t seek them out.)
I'm talking about the end-point, not the mid-point. Whether vaccines are supply-limited or not, we will eventually reach a time where everyone who wants to be vaccinated, has been vaccinated, and the remaining unvaccinated people will be mostly people who chose not to be vaccinated.
Agreed, on both counts. However, it is still true that these protective measures, whether masks or lockdowns, are mostly in place to protect unvaccinated people. And, as I said above, ultimately, most unvaccinated people will be people who chose not to be vaccinated.
Why should I put in any effort to protect people who won't protect themselves?
That might ultimately be the case but we're not there yet. If the hospitals fill up that's a problem for everyone.
So we're not allowed to discuss this scenario until we're actually in it?
I didn’t say that. But much of the discussion is about current events and what should be done now (in the US, anyway) and we should probably avoid confusing that with what should be done later.
I understand where you're coming from, but why protect people who don't want to be protected? Someone who chooses not to get the vaccine usually scoffs at the safety measures anyway, then why keep them up? You are coddling someone who does not want to be coddled, and in the process running society through a meatgrinder.
Because I haven't done so in a while, I just checked the current global Covid numbers. Of the ~16 million currently active cases, 99,4% are classified as a mild condition, while 0,4% are classified as severe. It looks to me like unecessary cause of fear. Yes, patients with corona can get severely ill and die, but of the ~187 million closed cases, 98% recovered, and 2% died. Covid can have long-lasting side-effects, but it is not the bubonic plague. A lot of conversations like this sound like the disease could be the end of humanity, but what we're most likely looking at is it becoming endemic.
We provide healthcare to drunk drivers causing accidents. We provide healthcare to pyromaniacs who burn houses down. We provide healthcare to abusers, murderers, thieves, robbers and rapists. We provide it to all their victims too. It's not unfair, it's a human right.
If you read further down the thread, you'll see that I agree with you.
It's not the bubonic plague. However, if we took no preventative measures, everybody would catch the coronavirus, and 2% of 7 billion people, or 140,000,000 people would die. That's more than 5 times the population of my home country, Australia. It might not be the end of the world, but it's still a lot of people.
I'm on the phone so please excuse the brevity.
It is, but over what time period, and what people? The entire planet isn't going to get covid at the same time, there won't be a pile of corpses. It also begs the question of who actually dies to covid. Mortality rates soar among older folks especially, and they would've gotten the flu or an inflammation of the lungs or some other old people culling disease. Eventually, people die.
The other risk factors are unfortunate, but we won't find a quick solution to e.g. obesity.
Okay. So we should let the old people die.
Do you have any grandparents still alive that you care about, and who you're willing to donate to the cause, so you can be free of restrictions and lockdowns?
Not what I said.
How else am I supposed to interpret this?
The headline, this summary, and the other comments here are framed in terms of a general principle, but the article is about a more specific question: should you be required to be vaccinated to fly on a plane within the US?
It seems a bit odd that people just want to talk about the general principle and not about air travel.