Generally, the more authoritarian a system is, the harder is standing up for liberties, because it has more willingness and tools to violently quell any resistance.
One example: a hypothetical doctor who spent 2020 healing Covid patients at great personal risk, has since recovered from Covid, then uses their professional judgement to delay vaccine selection (e.g. waiting for an upcoming nasal vaccine with sterilizing immunity) -- is no longer allowed to eat indoors or improve their health in a gym in New York or San Francisco. In some cases, their employer is threatening to fire them, even though their natural immunity is more protective than current, non-sterilizing intramuscular vaccines.
History shows that "Papers Please" often preceded questionable policy. Today, we have both questionable policy and poorly-conceived papers/identity systems being rolled out, with enforcement and fines starting in weeks.
Healthcare workers in many U.S. states are required to have vaccines for a variety of infections, including hepatitis, influenza, MM&R, etc., as a condition of their presence (and employment) in healthcare facilities. [1] Social and financial penalties for refusal to accept vaccines are not a novel situation for healthcare professionals.
The only difference with COVID is that 375,000 people died last year in the U.S. because of it. It is a pandemic. There are three vaccines that have been granted authorization by the FDA for COVID that have also been shown in preliminary studies to be safe and efficacious.[2]
Further, why would the hypothetical doctor, whose "natural immunity is more protective than current, non-sterilizing intramuscular vaccines" additionally need the "upcoming nasal vaccine with sterilizing immunity"?
If one _must_ take a vaccine to satisfy a legal mandate, one would prefer a vaccine that provides sterilizing immunity, i.e. a permanent solution, rather than years of variant-specific booster shots with temporary, non-sterilizing immunity.
> Whilst we feel that current vaccines are excellent for reducing the risk of hospital admission and disease, we propose that research be focused on vaccines that also induce high and durable levels of mucosal immunity in order to reduce infection of and transmission from vaccinated individuals. This could also reduce the possibility of variant selection in vaccinated individuals.
> Vaccines that are injected into the arm have done a spectacular job at preventing severe disease and death. But they do not generate the kind of protection in the nasal passages that would be needed to block all infection. That’s called “sterilizing immunity.” The fact that the vaccines don’t block all infections and don’t prevent vaccinated people from transmitting isn’t a big surprise, said Kathryn Edwards, a vaccine expert at Vanderbilt School of Medicine.
The MMR vaccine is sterilizing, there are no booster subscription plans required. It is unfortunate that hundreds of millions of people now have category confusion where they mistakenly equate rushed, temporary, tactical vaccines (focused on symptom and mortality reduction) with proven vaccines (like MMR) that provide long-term immunity and have many years of safety data.
Also, people do get tetanus boosters as needed and some people do have to get another round of Hep-B again. My wife who is about to enter a nursing program has to go through another regimen of Hep-B because her medical paperwork shows she doesnt have immunity. She was vaccinated. It does occur in some people that their body does not retain immunity.
Now yes, I would like to see a better COVID shot. Or atleast know the full limits of the COVID shot. We are still not 100% how long someone has immunity. Hopefully it is a long time. If it turns out to be short, well yes I think we all want longer. There is also no garuntee of protection against variants. Measles could very well morph out in the wild as something different and current MMR vaccines render useless. I would actually say it is not an if, but when. As it is common for things to evolve over time.
Yes, no vaccine or therapeutic is 100%, but a vaccine delivered via the arm deltoid muscle is going to produce blood/serum antibodies. A respiratory virus like SARS-CoV-2 enters via the upper respiratory system, usually the nose. Natural immunity provides substantial mucosal antibodies in the upper respiratory system but current Covid vaccines do not. This is why a vaccinated person can get infected (via nose) and still be protected against symptoms (by blood/serum antibodies).
Unfortunately, FDA approval is being rushed and may appear as early as next week, possibly in order to justify mandates. This is despite (a) Pfizer trial does not conclude until Jan 2023, (b) the control group for the trials have been lost.
And the key question would be: is there any statistically significant report of safety or efficacy problems in any peer reviewed study or even reported through VARES?
Some autopsies are finally being done in US and Germany, which have already been able to identify some deaths which can be directly attributed to vaccines. It will take time, but physical evidence from those proven cases can help focus the search for patterns in the data, which in turn can guide the design of new studies to screen those few who may be at risk from vaccines.
Nothing was omitted from my statement. They have been authorized under an Emergency Use Authorization, not the full approval process because, if we waited for full approval, we would have no vaccines at all because full approval can take well over a year.
In any case, the Pfizer vaccine is expected to be fully approved within days.
>Nothing was omitted from my statement. They have been authorized under an Emergency Use Authorization, not the full approval process because, if we waited for full approval, we would have no vaccines at all because full approval can take well over a year.
The authorization's value was in allowing voluntary vaccination by those who are willing to undergo vaccination before FDA approval. There's a big difference between being _allowed_ to be injected with a substance, versus being _forced_ to be injected with a substance under pain of losing the job that provides for housing, health insurance, and other legal mandates that you could be thrown in jail for (like child support) if you are terminated "for cause" and unable to pay.
>In any case, the Pfizer vaccine is expected to be fully approved within days.
Excellent! We should hold vaccinations to at least this standard before we force people to take them, if people must be forced.
It seems no more bothersome than being required to be licensed to drive or to present a proof of age to purchase alcohol. There are perfectly viable alternatives - you can eat outdoors, get takeout, exercise outside, just like how you can ride a bike or take a taxi if you choose not to get a driving license.
And the decision to require vaccination at hospitals are also made on recommendation of doctors that are as, if not more qualified than the hypothetical doctor. The doctor in question can also open their own practice if they do not want to be employed by the hospital.
Licensing systems necessitate some surveillance in the form of identification and data storage, but it's not as if these do not exist already and somehow the driving license has not caused American to spiral into dystopia nor is it even close to being the worst surveillance mechanism that the American government could choose to use if it does turn authoritarian.
The viable alternatives are separate but equal. Where have I heard that before?
Driver's licenses are not required on private property, so the driver license analogy doesn't hold when we're talking about private establishments. Requiring a license and government dictating your driving behavior on your own private property would indeed be dystopian.
It’s not being discriminated against based on some protected class. Being vaccinated is a choice, unlike skin color.
The government will not let you serve alcohol at a restaurant unless you check the drinker’s age. The government will now also not let you serve diners indoors unless you check they have been vaccinated.
>It’s not being discriminated against based on some protected class. Being vaccinated is a choice, unlike skin color.
Good to know we've established that you're ok with folks being shut out of a diner by mandate of government, so long as the reason is something other than related to a protected class. How about we ban everyone under 40 from dining indoors -- after all age discrimination is legal as long as it's against those under 40. We can also outlaw anyone who makes their living in the information economy, they shouldn't have chosen that career if they wanted to . And I think I want to ban anyone who drives or rides in motor vehicles, because there's a public safety risk as drivers and passengers of motor vehicles are one of the most common causes of traumatic death.
>The government will not let you serve alcohol at a restaurant unless you check the drinker’s age. The government will now also not let you serve diners indoors unless you check they have been vaccinated.
So you're one of those that thinks those old enough to go to war shouldn't be able to have a drink? The drinking age is one of the weakest arguments for government control and is an excellent example of overstepping gone wrong. I seriously can't tell if you might be using that example as evidence to discredit the mandates.
