3507

Somebody has a sacred belief to not get vaccinated? Does that relate to something in the Bible (I don't think so)?

Isn't there something in the Bible about contagious diseases? Lepers had to live separately. Also, there's something in Leviticus about "running issue[s] out of [a person's] flesh", apparently relating to contagion: Lev 15:4b: "and every thing, whereon he sitteth, shall be unclean." It all seems to point to avoiding (essentially isolating) the person who has some contagious disease.

Perhaps most (though not all) sacred beliefs arose from something sensible (or at least partially sensible) like that. So, I would think that people with sacred beliefs today ought to be able to work out some way to avoid spreading contagious diseases. If they don't want to get vaccinated in a pandemic, why don't they isolate themselves like the person in Leviticus would have done? The person in Leviticus was deliberately _not_touched_ while he was unclean; things he _touched_ were unclean and people avoided _them_; if he wasn't isolating himself, then he would have _been_ isolated, even by force if necessary, to protect the community from the contagious disease.

And if it's a sacred belief for them, why don't they write that one down specifically to inform the rest of us that they'll obey it? If we find that they're successfully isolating themselves and none of them (or extremely few of them) are spreading Covid (detectable from contact tracing), then we wouldn't need to care so much about them getting vaccinated, and moreover if their practice is working then very few of _them_ will have Covid.

But now that's not true, because _many_ of them do have Covid, and some of them are taking up scarce resources in our hospitals because of it!

Just like the saying "Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins", now "Your right to your sacred belief ends where it infringes on _my_ sacred belief."


Some of that's a good argument, at least partially. Usually when I get vaccinated it's at Kaiser which has my medical history. A couple of times I got flu shots at drug store pharmacies. At least once I asked about single-dose/multi-dose vials so that I could get the dose that doesn't have the mercury.

You write "No one (no one!!!) knows how it will affect humans down the road!". The same could be said of long Covid. What we do know is that Covid overall, including long Covid, and including more deaths than in a typical war, has already had much worse effects on the vast majority of people than the vaccines have. And "no one" knows _exactly_ how Covid will affect humans down the road; the indications so far are that Covid will have much worse effects on humans down the road than the vaccines will -- but we don't know exactly _how_ much worse.

But all that's not the main issue about it. The main issue is that what one person does (adversely) affects the amount of risk that _other_ people have -- unless that one person is reliably isolated from others (or alternatively here, is vaccinated).

I agree that, thus far, the Bubonic Plague has been worse than Covid.

That's not saying much, though. The Bubonic Plague was worse than a lot of things. Maybe Covid will eventually catch up to it. Some of these virus variants are getting more and more impressive. We have quite a large population of incubators (unvaccinated people) in the world, in which to mutate. "Survival of the fittest" is at work among the variants.

Are quarantines "punishment"?

I disagree on the point about whether the non-vaccinated should be forced to live apart (or take equivalent precautions). Depending on the evaluated risks they pose to others, if they are hazardous to other people's health then they should live apart (or take equivalent precautions) (sometimes even if that means forced, to live apart) until the hazard is somehow overcome. I wouldn't call that "punishment". I'd call it public hygiene or public safety.

I wouldn't want a sprayer of bullets nor a sprayer of Covid viruses out loose in the same public spaces where my children go. We lock up the sprayer of bullets (the mass shooter)...

This "financially responsible" point was addressed earlier. I (and a lot of people) (probably most people) would be glad to make our government financially responsible for all your medical care as long as you aren't taking really unreasonable risks with your health; but, for us to do this, you'd have to let us make a universal single-payor health care system (or something that good). For each pandemic or epidemic or other natural disaster that comes along (Covid won't be the last), we can't make a big exception for it -- it would be either universal health care or not universal health care. And that would be a lot more efficient and overall less costly than carving out exceptions.

Oooh!! That burns me up! A blown up, specious conspiracy theory, spun into existence and milked for a thousand times what it's worth, and more!

Let's say (simplistically, & exaggerated to make a point) that there are two theories of how humanity works:

Theory X is that there are vast, evil conspiracies so deep & so complicated that no-one will ever be able to prove anything about them; they are effectively invisible & always will be.

Theory Y: most people want to be good; by observing the world we can learn more; some things are more likely than others; & sometimes one thing is better than another.

Which theory is better?

There's a similar thing in the history of astronomy:

The Earth-centered system could predict the positions of the planets as long as you could keep adding more & more epicycles to the geometry. It was very complicated & didn't have a good simple theoretical foundation to explain why all those complicated calculations were necessary.

The Sun-centered system was far simpler (especially with circles), & still almost that simple when the circles were replaced by ellipses. The elliptical Sun-centered system could predict the positions of the planets just as accurately as the Earth-centered system did, but with far simpler calculations. _And_ the Sun-centered system fit with a theory of gravitational attraction.

When a simpler explanation fits the facts as well as the very complicated explanation, usually the simpler explanation is more useful, & often is more true, too.

It is true that the Covid vaccines were developed (or at least part of the development process was done) in record time.

Since they were new (and since I'm moderately suspicious of both (a) government and (b) drugs), I did not try to get vaccinated really soon. I'm retired in good circumstances and able to live isolated for several months without much effort. (I also didn't want to have to get tested with something stuck up my nose. If given the choice, I preferred to just live isolated for a while longer. And that worked out for me.). But, at the same time, I also knew that my chances with a vaccine were way better than with Covid. And I knew there was a civic duty involved, because Covid isn't just about one individual at a time, it's contagious, so what one person does affects others. So, when it was my turn to get vaccinated, I took it like a man, just like I registered for the draft in 1971, except that getting vaccinated is a lot safer than the draft and is for a more clearly-defined, justifiable war.



I agree with the first part of that. Pharmaceutical companies, similarly as some other kinds of huge corporations in business for profit, are not very accountable to the general public, _unless_ we have a big organization to help us hold them accountable. (That big organization is, effectively, government regulation.)

The part I disagree with is where you say "how many people have already had serious reactions and/or died", as though reactions and/or deaths from vaccines had been a bigger problem than reactions and/or deaths from Covid. The reactions and/or deaths from Covid constitute the far bigger problem; it is so much bigger that a huge vaccination program is appropriate.

[...] (#8 already answered yesterday.)



Those are stirring words, not to stir me to action, but to stir some others (maybe like the people who storm Capitol buildings). Whatever the Covid recovery rate actually is, we can already see that it's not good enough, which we can quickly see by the number of deaths from Covid surpassing the number of deaths of any war we've ever been in.

There was a good joke last year about staying at home in the pandemic. It ran something like this: "Now with the Covid-19 pandemic, we finally get the chance to save the world by staying at home all day watching TV. Don't screw it up."

And what did they do? They screwed it up. You'd think the one thing Americans are good at is sitting around watching TV. But when called on to do that (virtually the same thing: called on to _stay_home_), a sizable portion of America rose up and said: "They can't take _my_ freedom away!" And why did they think _that_ thought, when there are so many other things to think about such as contagion, protecting others, public health, responsibility, etc. They thought _that_ thought because their concept of a war only means the kind where they can shoot guns at people; and any other concept of civic duty they have is really small.

The reality is that freedom is not the only thing. There's freedom and there's responsibility. You need both.

It is true that there are powerful entities that have too much of the wrong kinds of influence (or "control") over us. Some of them are entities in the government, and some of them are entities in huge business corporations. So what are we to do -- it is this: We must _discern_. We must figure out, and come to an understanding as a group, _which_ parts are exerting _too_ much of the _wrong_ kinds of influence. At the same time, we must respect or retain or support _other_ parts which are more about solutions, not problems.

Unfortunately, what many people (maybe even you) are doing is to notice some part or parts going wrong (or at least being told by somebody that those parts are going wrong) (and believing _that_ thing which they're being told); and then (this is where the problem starts), they lose all faith in the _entire_ system, and they try to disrespect, throw out, and stop listening to the _entire_ system. Then we end up with pandemics and other natural disasters without any way to address them -- and no stable democracy left, but instead a demagogue at the top with a corrupt crony system (and I'm _not_ talking about the Biden Administration; I'm talking about the Trump administration).

Bad Bob Loc: Virginia

EmilyD

I'm not going to go into what personal beliefs mean to people of faith. That is something you can't know of, no matter how hard you try to minimize it.

Actually, the same with everything else. I'm getting weary with going back and forth with my views and why I have them, and there's too much repetition of ideas. I've posted quite enough to tell you how I think. Going on with this ridiculousness of tearing apart each other's posts is not making any difference with my views...in fact, I feel stronger than ever about the decisions I make and the way I go about making them. My decisions are the right ones for me.

Good luck with your decisions - I sincerely hope they are the right ones for you. Take care.

Kitten Courageous Loc: The Derelict Ship Maggie's Revenge

It's short for WAshington POst. It has nothing to do with anyone. Its the name of a newspaper.

3507

Some people are indeed against that particular law, openly and proudly. I don't know whether they actually disobey it. It's certainly within their rights to try to get the law changed! That's part of how our government works. And in order to try to get a law changed, they'd have to be against it or against something in it; that doesn't necessarily mean they actually disobey it while it's in effect.



You're being too specific to the individual person. The question was more abstract than that: would such a law interfere or affect the personal choices of such people. I did phrase it about me, sorry about that; now I see you are literal-minded and I will have to phrase things carefully and specifically. I had assumed you'd understand it's slightly more abstract than just about me the individual. It's a question about laws and society and and civic duties.

The draft did interfere with the chosen life paths of many young men.

As the draft did interfere with the chosen life paths of many young men, I think it's fair to say that the draft interfered with many young men's "personal choices". I had hoped you'd either admit that or, understanding the issue, have some explanation about it.



Not specifically, no. I always intended to obey whatever the legal requirements were. That's because those legal requirements had removed other choices (more precisely, degraded the viability of those other choices) that I would have preferred to make instead. That is, some of the other choices (like not having anything to do with the war) had become illegal, and no longer viable -- most of us, including me, didn't have the resources or desire to pack up and move out of the country (such as to Canada) just then. And I didn't feel that I qualified to be a Conscientious Objector (explained earlier (though maybe that was in a different thread)). So I merely followed the law and took my chances with the draft lottery, and the chance of possibly getting some exemption such as a student deferment if necessary and allowed. I wasn't literally dragged in chains to the draft registration office, but I did feel shoehorned into it because of the draft law, and I took the path of least resistance, thinking that at least maybe I was performing the right civic duty by registering, even though I had doubts about both the war and my fitness for such a task.

When contemplating that law _or_others_like_it_, I think about what justifies such a law and how should we apply the concepts of personal choices and civic duties and legal requirements. It's a difficult matter.

The draft had a moral component mixed into the situation: to register and then, if Selected, Serve, we might have to kill people we didn't know much about. Did we, or should we, trust the government enough to make that moral decision for us?

A similar legal requirement, to get vaccinated for Covid in a Covid pandemic, is an easier issue for me. That's because an individual getting vaccinated is not harming anybody except possibly himself or herself. The effect on _other_ people, of an individual getting the Covid vaccine, is only to help them by reducing their chances of catching Covid by subtracting one potential carrier (or approximatly 90 or 95% of a potential carrier, as the vaccines have such an efficacy rate.) So, _for_example_, "me" getting vaccinated for Covid does not kill anybody else, it just reduces their chances of catching Covid. So as a moral issue for the person considering getting vaccinated, it's _far_ easier than possibly getting drafted into the kind of war with guns and bombs.

The comparison between a (possibly future) vaccine law and the (past) draft law is apt (although I haven't noticed anyone but me making the comparison). Both have a lot to do about civic duty when the nation or its government leaders perceive the nation to be threatened. (The pandemic actually threatens the World's people, but our national government has particular influence on what happens within our _nation_, so I phrased it as a national matter.)

The People are threatened (now, in 2021). This time the threat comes from a mutating virus. This time shooting guns and dropping bombs doesn't help, but getting vaccinated does help. In 1971 the risk (among people registering for the draft) was that the end result might be they'd get shot or get PTSD or get exposed to something like Agent Orange, and so on. In 2021 the risk (among people receiving a Covid vaccine) is that they might get side effects from the vaccine.

In 1971 some young men gave up other choices, or were forced to give up other choices, in order to perform a civic duty which was risky to themselves and (depending on how a person thinks) could involve a moral decision about killing other people. As I've said, I consider it a difficult issue to think about. Maybe others here have answers about it. But, _if_ that draft law in 1971 was justified, _then_ I think a Covid vaccine law now would also be justified.

What I want to see is people either admitting the situations are similar or explaining why they're not. _I_ think there's some hypocrisy going on somewhere:

Why would the same people who approved of the 1971 draft disapprove of a vaccine law? I think there are a lot of such people. They seem happy (or at least placid) about the idea of shooting or bombing an enemy people (and just who's designated an enemy and who isn't may sometimes depend on as little as who got elected president for the current 4-year cycle, or what the propaganda of the time is, for whatever reason), and encouraging or shaming young men into going to war --

yet they don't do their part to protect the public in a pandemic!

Are they _really_ supporting the nation, or do they have some other motive going on? Maybe they just aren't thinking much, but enjoy the thought of bombing nations they don't like?

manning5 Loc: Richmond, VA

Nah! The number 28 and its factorials was copyrighted or something, but not the letter W.

Better charmed than merely charming...