EmilyD wrote:
You say that it is my civic duty to get a v*****e. All US citizens have the freedoms, protections and legal rights that the Constitution promises. And citizens also have the responsibility, or "civic duty," to meet certain societal standards and guidelines, that's true. But civic responsibilities include both those that are voluntary as well as those required by law. An example of a voluntary civic duty would be v****g in e******ns. One can choose to either v**e or not v**e. There is no penalty for choosing either option. An example of a mandatory civic duty would be jury duty...or obeying the law. You cannot choose to disobey the law... if you do, you would pay a penalty.
Getting this v*****e is a voluntary civic duty. One where the citizen has a choice to either get inoculated or not. With v****g, you can fill out a b****t and v**e, or not...just like you can go get the inoculation or not. It is a personal choice. That some people believe that personal choice is "wrong" is a matter of opinion - hopefully an opinion that is based on studying the pro's and con's of both sides of an issue. Having an opinion is another example of personal choice - the choice to believe in something they agree with or not. Someone who disagrees with someone else's decision to refrain from v****g or getting a v*****e has the freedom to express their opinion about it, that is their right of free speech which is given to us by our Constitution. But it is not their right to try to coerce or shame another into doing something they have decided not to do because of information they obtained researching and studying the pro's and con's of the issue at hand. Decisions to get a medical procedure that involves medicines that one will be required to take should most definitely be based on the medical history of that person - something that a stranger who is harping on them to make a decision they do not want to make has no knowledge of.
People should not try to guilt or coerce others to do something they don't want to do - they just don't know everything there is to know about someone else's life....often times even people they are close to!
With regard to the rate of recovery from C***d being 98%, that's not something I pulled out of thin air, it is documented by a very reliable source: Worldometer. The information they record is updated about every five minutes. 2% deaths is bad, yes, and a lot of people are affected by those deaths. But 98% recovery cannot be ignored. A lot of people (multiple millions) are NOT dead who contracted C***d because of that extremely high recovery rate. Following Worldometer report is a factcheck rating of Worldometer, so you can see that it is an unbiased source of information:
You say that it is my civic duty to get a v*****e.... (
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Some v******tions for other diseases are already required by laws, for example for children entering public school. Are you against those laws? You said:
"An example of a mandatory civic duty would be jury duty...or obeying the law. You cannot choose to disobey the law... if you do, you would pay a penalty."
Regarding "mandatory civic duty" and "cannot choose":
In an earlier example, I wrote: "...having to register for the draft when I was 18. That was a mandate, or something as severe as a mandate. Did it interfere with my 'personal choice'?"
You didn't answer that.
My point about the draft is that there are similarities with v******tion. I'll explain more about that below (at length).
Regarding the draft, there was both an element of personal choice and an element of civic duty. I _could_ choose to disobey the law or try to get around it. As you've said, there could be a penalty.
I really did NOT want to go shoot at strangers and all the rest of it. I wasn't even old enough or experienced enough or educated enough to evaluate such a war and know which was the right side of it. (Just the fact that I was born in a country doesn't mean the country is always right.). But, I also knew there was a duty. I believed that at least _some_ times we might have to k**l to defend our country. A lot of boys and men have been and will be in this situation. The theory of the draft, I figure, is that if there's shooting and being shot at, that has to be done, then _somebody_ has to do it.
Instead of a reasoned approach, like to think "What is this war for? Why are we fighting it?" we were just ordered to suspend wh**ever our thought process was and just sign up for the war lottery -- to shoot at wh**ever people the government pointed us at. And be shot at, of course; it's all a two-way street; something was going on in Vietnam where young men over there were also having to shoot and be shot at. A lot of them probably understood it as much as I did, which was: not much at all; and they had to do what their government ordered them to do. I consider myself lucky that I was not one of the randomly "Selected" men for such Service.
Where was all the talk about "personal choice" back then?
In various stages, "we" were just treated as cannon fodder -- not so much me personally (I did have to register, but then didn't get Selected), but young men in general at that time. Randomly selected to go risk death and k**l others for some cause we/they didn't, and couldn't really, understand.
And our country's NOT always right. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. It's pretty much like most other countries in that way.
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Now we are considering whether to have a "mandate", or law, that says people have to be v******ted against C***d. If passed it would be a law intended to protect the public.
There are lots of laws intended to protect the public. Most, maybe all, of them have an element of personal choice and an element of civic duty. I'll number some examples #1 through #4:
There are:
(#1) some laws requiring v******tions against some diseases before attending public school.
There was when I was 18 (#2) a law that said I had to enter a lottery for whether I had to shoot and get shot at (the military draft in the U.S.-Vietnam war era); the idea being (if I understand it correctly) that we were protecting our nation from an enemy.
Now there might be (#3) a law that says people have to get v******ted against C***d (the enemy in that case is the C***d v***s).
All three (including #3 if it were passed) are laws intended, or at least ostensibly intended, to protect the public. And there are other such examples:
(#4) The law against drunk driving is to protect the public from the risks to them from drunk drivers.
If your arguments (about personal choice and civic duty) are good they should apply similarly, not just to the considered C***d law but also to other such examples. In each case there's an element of personal choice and also an element of civic duty.
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The C***d v***s in its multitudes is a hazard to us. It has already caused more U.S. deaths than any war we've ever had.
In the U.S.-Vietnam war, some people in government made a law that made men of a certain age subject to shooting strangers or being shot at by strangers -- not _all_ such men, but a lot of them, through a random se******n process: a lottery: the Selective Service, or Draft, and then assignments -- some were sent to the front lines, and some to other places, and a lot of them didn't call that a personal choice! And now:
Now, the C***d v***s is as much a hazard to us as (especially when we were living and working in the U.S.) any of the people in Vietnam were. But instead of a law that requires some of us to shoot strangers and be shot at by strangers, we might have a law that says we have to get v******ted. Bullets k**l people, v*****es k**l (or prevent, therefore k*****g by attrition) v***ses. Gunfighting is risky, being v******ted is much less risky.
I am so lucky; not only did I get a high draft number and didn't have to go shoot strangers and be shot at by strangers, but this time around (not having to register for a Draft this time) all I had to do was get a couple of v*****e shots, plus boosters to come, I think. Like almost everybody else who got v******ted, I had no adverse effects at all. If there are any future, delayed adverse effects from it, they'll probably be a lot easier to take than Agent Orange or PTSD from a gun-fighting war. I'm happy to trade in the risk of getting long C***d, and instead take the risk of the v*****e.
I suppose some people (who are they -- maybe mostly Republicans?) will say they'd prefer shooting at (in 1971) Vietnamese people rather than (in 2021) accepting a v*****e that k**ls v***ses or prevents them from invading their bodies. Do they think, "nicer v***s, more evil Vietnamese"? Do they think "CIVIC DUTY to shoot strangers and be shot at by strangers; PERSONAL CHOICE whether to harbor, and aid and abet, the enemy v***s"? Do they think, "Invade a country and get shot at by bullets, shucks that's okay, it's a civic duty; v******ted, not on your life, that's _dangerous_!"?
And so on.
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Also, I want to set the record straight. In an earlier post, you said "Saying that you didn't bother to read the rest of my post beyond #2 ...". But what I had actually said was: "That's as far as I read; I didn't look at your #3, etc.
". I was letting you know as a courtesy. There's a difference between "didn't look at" and "saying" that I "didn't bother". I could have been short on time.
When you took offense and rephrased it as you did, then I did admit I had been somewhat disgusted.
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I'm looking back now, to reply to #8 (social contract): You asked "A 'social contract'?? Where is that found?" I was referring to the philosophy of government (or of society, or of civilization), not a specific legal document. The phrase "social contract" is in fairly common usage:
https://iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/Social contract theory, nearly as old as philosophy itself, is the view that persons' moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they live.
Also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contractIn moral and political philosophy, the social contract is a theory or model that originated during the Age of Enlightenment and usually concerns the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual.
Even if you don't call it a "social contract", there is nonetheless some form of common understanding and some form of cooperation. "Social contract" is just a name that some people like to call that.
I notice those two sources differ in the detail: "the Age of Enlightenment" is not "nearly as old as philosophy itself". But old, anyway. When I said "social contract" I meant the idea that there's enough common understanding and cooperation to have a working society; and I meant that, for a nation, that usually involves a government, as opposed to chaos.