New answers tagged policy
2
The government - any government - ought to do what is best for the population of their country as a whole. So a government that believes not getting vaccinated is on average harmful to you, and harmful to others, ought to take steps to get more people vaccinated. And the current US government seems to be of the opinion that not getting vaccinated is bad for ...
0
Yes, there are. Biden fits into this category. Kinda.
MarketWatch says:
Joe Biden wants a first-time homeowner tax credit
And since a tax credit is essentially giving out money (less taxes for you = more money for you), you get paid by the government to be a first time home owner. This makes homes cheaper, but only if you are a first time home owner. For ...
8
Radio host Thom Hartmann has gotten several calls like this and explains it nicely. The Q is: isn't there some theoretical heartless Democratic strategist who thinks: "Republican governors seem to be trying to kill Republican voters. Why not let them? Fewer Republicans is good for us and can't bounce back -- we're on record as trying really, really hard ...
6
People also need to know that this desire to make the reluctant do something like vaccinate for the greater good of the community didn't just start with the democrats. Since the dawn of human history, there were many people who refused to listen to doctors, from the 1800s to even all the way back to ancient Rome and the Golden Age. When many people ignore ...
0
Since the "herd immunity" angle has already been covered, I want to add an answer covering the Realpolitik angle, aka what's driving the politicians to ensure their reelection happens.
NB: personally I'm 100% in favor of vaccines, so I lined up to get mine as soon as I was eligible back in April. I also plan to get booster shots for the rest of my ...
14
If coronavirus vaccines were 100% effective, and available to everyone who wanted them, you would have a point - we do not need to use the force of the law to protect people from themselves. And yes, this would be an instance of natural selection, i.e. "the natural weeding-out process" - people who made bad decisions would be more likely to die ...
25
This is not just about personal choice. There are two things that make you less likely to infect someone else:
You are vaccinated. Being vaccinated not only protects you, it protects everyone you come into contact with because you shed less virus particles and hence are less infectious.
You wear a facemask where appropriate (indoors / in crowds). Facemasks ...
26
The epidemiological aspect mentioned in other answers are certainly correct, but on a more fundamental level this is a matter of ethical attitude. As an analogy, consider the case of encountering a suicidal person contemplating to jump from an otherwise deserted bridge. To (hopefully) a vast majority, just shrugging your shoulders and being on your way is ...
31
Even though I have sometimes thought that allowing the unwilling to be vaccinated to sicken and die is just an instance of evolution in action, I still realize that there are practical* reasons to encourage vaccination.
In addition to the herd immunity factor that has already been covered, there are problems of limited medical resources and costs. Have you ...
53
Let's separate out two distinct issues...
First, the Biden administration is following epidemiological best practices. As more people get vaccinated, the disease spreads more slowly, the incidences of the disease become less severe, and the impact on medical services becomes less pronounced. A viral disease is a lot like a wildfire, and we have the same two ...
91
Herd immunity* is one aspect.
Limiting mutations is another.
The Covid virus has shown so far a disturbing, and not totally expected, capacity to quickly evolve itself into more infectious variants (and possibly more lethal/harmful ones as well, if the impact of Delta on young people in the UK turns out to be actually worse). Any large scale population ...
answered Jul 14 at 19:51
Italian Philosophers 4 Monica
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Because vaccinations are not just about protecting those who get vaccinated but also about achieving herd immunity. As the Mayo Clinic explains it:
Herd immunity occurs when a large portion of a community (the herd) becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. As a result, the whole community becomes protected — ...
3
Prohibitions against selling blood are a specific case of prohibitions against any trafficking in body parts. This is generally intended to prevent poor people from being taken advantage of by rich people.
One can easily imagine a billionaire who needs a kidney transplant, but doesn't want to put themselves on the normal waiting list. Instead, they go to a ...
1
The hypothetical regulation-free market, where everything can be bought and sold, is something pretty much everyone opposes. In that kind of free market not just is fraud rampant, but even murdering or enslaving the competition are perfectly acceptable business practices. This is better known as anarchy, which can be observed in civil war regions that left a ...
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