If people are refusing to to get vaccinated because they think there are mandates, then that means they are refusing out of spite, rather than making reasonable decisions.
That's exactly right, and it was entirely predictable.
In January 2008, the ACLU wrote a pandemic preparedness plan that states this (emphasis added).
Lessons from History
American history contains vivid reminders that grafting the values of law enforcement and national security onto public health is both ineffective and dangerous. Too often, fears aroused by disease and epidemics have justified abuses of state power. Highly discriminatory and forcible vaccination and quarantine measures adopted in response to outbreaks of the plague and smallpox over the past century have consistently accelerated rather than slowed the spread of disease, while fomenting public distrust and, in some cases, riots.
The lessons from history should be kept in mind whenever we are told by government officials that “tough,” liberty-limiting actions are needed to protect us from dangerous diseases. Specifically:
- Coercion and brute force are rarely necessary. In fact they are generally counterproductive—they gratuitously breed public distrust and encourage the people who are most in need of care to evade public health authorities.
- On the other hand, effective, preventive strategies that rely on voluntary participation do work. Simply put, people do not want to contract smallpox, influenza or other dangerous diseases. They want positive government help in avoiding and treating disease. As long as public officials are working to help people rather than to punish them, people are likely to engage willingly in any and all efforts to keep their families and communities healthy.
- Minorities and other socially disadvantaged populations tend to bear the brunt of tough public health measures.
It seems these lessons from history were forgotten by the public health "experts".
The issue is on them, not the people supposedly making mandates
It seems that you are equally unaware of the lessons from history.
(BTW, there are no mandates for people to get vaccinated).
Not any more, but there were plenty of mandates that, according to the ACLU pandemic preparedness plan linked above, fomented public distrust.
Some employers in wanting to have a safer working environment have asked their employees to be vaccinated and if they are not have asked them to leave the place of work.
Those employers were absolute fools implementing, to quote the ACLU pandemic preparedness plan linked above, discriminatory, forcible vaccination policies that disproportionately harmed minorities. Worse the vaccine does not in any way make the working environment safer, and anyone who thinks so has not been paying attention or, to quote the current buzz phrase, "following the science". Those employers and anyone else who advocated for forcible vaccination policies is on the wrong side of history.
In fact Fauci was surprised that the efficacy of the vaccine turned out to be better than he had predicted (in the early days before the vaccine came along). It is only the anti vaxers that construct this strawman of vaccines making you 100% completely immune to catching the disease.
Historical revisionism. Fauci himself told people that they would be a "dead end" to the virus. The media pretended like you would not get COVID. Biden said if you get the vaccine, you're not going to get COVID. The CDC Director said that people were not going to get COVID and that breakthrough cases were "rare". It was not until it became abundantly obvious that breakthrough cases were not in fact "rare" but rather almost certain that they pivoted to saying it would prevent severe disease and death.
Trust being shattered in far right wing USA minds by the propoganda and misinformation being spread across the internet.
Not at all. And why are you STILL politicizing this?
The CDC is poised to authorize a SEVENTH dose of the vaccine for people in the US with no data that it will be beneficial. That's why uptake of the bivalent booster has been so pitiful. According to the CDC's tracker, < 17% of eligible people in the US have gotten the bivalent booster. Certainly you don't believe that 83% of people in the US are "anti-vaxxers", do you? I mean, that is an incredibly intellectually lazy way to try to make your point, and it's not very compelling.
Quite the spin. You are blaming the people that take the vaccine and promote its use for the stupidness of the misinformed antivaxxers.
No, I'm blaming COVID vaccine zealots for overstating vaccine efficacy and fomenting distrust in other, well-proven vaccines. They need to own this downturn in vaccine uptake. COVID vaccine zealots have done more to harm overall vaccine uptake than "anti-vaxxers" could ever have accomplished in their wildest dreams.
The vaccine reduces the rate of transmission but does not guarantee a vaccinated person cannot catch it and pass it on.
Nonsense. Nearly everyone is going to get COVID, regardless of their vaccination status. You don't have to be a mathematics expert to figure out that equates to a near 100% breakthrough infection rate.
We have at least 200,000 people refusing to be vaccinated.
Do they even need to be vaccinated? I mean, you do know there are studies that show that if you've been infected with COVID, you have as good or maybe even
better protection than someone who is vaccinated, right? What benefit would those who have had and recovered from COVID derive from vaccination? And how many of those 200,000 fit in that category?
Our eradication strategy was during the lockdowns, before people got vaccinated. We are no longer using an eradication strategy.
The eradication strategy was never feasible. I know that NZ finally waved the white flag on their eradication strategy that was doomed to fail from the start. It's good to see them join the rest of the world in reality.
If you look at age stratefied charts also divided up into fully vaccinated vs not vaccinated you can see that in every age group there is a 10x better chance of avoiding death by those that are fully vaccinated in comparison to the age stratefied peers.
There is not.
I verify what the scientific community and what my government is saying by looking at the data.
I see you're under the misguided perception that there is a scientific consensus.
It's funny you should mention this. Here is a great article talking about "scientific consensus" as it pertains to the pandemic.
Scientific consensus has become a manufactured construct, dictated by politics and power.
In a recent interview, famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was challenged on his scientific views about COVID-19 and he said “I’m only interested in consensus” - words that would have Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei rolling in their graves.
maryannedemasi.substack.com
The truth is, there never was a scientific consensus on COVID. Just the state-approved propaganda.
Trump was wrong, Fauci was correct.
You just can't stop policing this discussion.
I'm all for the Age Stratification. I freely admit the elderly are much more at risk than the young. Nowere have I denied this or pretended anything that you are suggesting of me.
Then you should realize that the risk calculus for vaccination is quite different depending on your age, and that young, healthy people don't need multiple doses of vaccine to be "safe" from COVID.
I've had two plus a booster. It seems the government is going to make another dose available soon, and I will gladly take it.
May I ask why? You said you've had COVID. And you've have three doses of vaccine. What benefit do you believe you will derive from a fourth dose of a vaccine for a disease that you now have developed immunity to via infection?
I find it very weird to focus on how many vaccine injections a person gets, why is this even an antivax talking point?
I find it very weird that you keep referring to me as "anti vax". I have had all of my regularly scheduled vaccines, as have both of my children. My wife, myself, my son and my daughter all received the primary series of the COVID vaccine, as we calculated the benefit for the primary series was probably worth it. We are not "anti vax" in any way despite your repeated false claims.
I also find it very weird that you're not at all concerned about the number of vaccine injections one takes, especially since we have absolutely no long-term safety data. It's equally weird that you just kind of ignored what I posted about the safety concerns about mRNA that were prevalent in the 2017 article I posted. This thought process is akin to saying, if taking 500mg of acetaminophen is good, then taking 3,500mg is even better! Of course, that's complete foolishness.
By the way, I'm not alone in this thought process. Way back when boosters were first proposed, the top two vaccine regulators at the FDA resigned in protest, stating they felt political pressure to approve vaccines on a paucity of data and no demonstrated benefit. And I can guarantee you that those vaccine regulators were not in any way "antivax".
Do you have any concern that dosing and re-dosing ad infinitum with mRNA MIGHT just carry with it potential risks and adverse events (like the issues discussed in the 2017 article)? Or do you believe that COVID vaccination in perpetuity will ALWAYS carry benefits and never have any risks?
www.cdc.gov
www.cdc.gov
www.health.nsw.gov.au
