Scrutable

So much for just locking down the unvaccinated - Austria is going into lockdown as they plan to make covid vaccination compulsory as of February next year.

“For a long time the consensus in this country was that we don’t want a vaccine mandate,” Schallenberg said after a meeting with the Alpine republic’s #secondmentions heads of state. “In spite of months of persuasion, we have not managed to convince enough people to be vaccinated, and we are f.cking sick of their sh.t”.

The Alpine republic [you've used this one - ed.] is weathering its most powerful wave of Covid, with authorities on Friday reporting 990 cases per 100,000 people over seven days.

“From this day Austria is a dictatorship,” said Herbert Kickl of the fascist dictatorship far-right Freedom* party, which has advocated scientifically unproven alternative treatments against coronavirus infections, such as the anti-parasite drug ivermectin, and is therefore to be considered a total f.cking moron as well as a fascist.

* - i.e. the kind of "freedom" in which you're free to force other people to do what you say but hate being told what to do.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 19, 2021 12:43 pm

So much for just locking down the unvaccinated*

* - unvaccinated people are still allowed to go to work, visit their partners, go for recreational walks and go shopping for food or other essential supplies

In Italy, you need a Green Pass to go to work, even if it's possible to get a short-lived one via a negative test. So that essentially means that it's a pain in the arse for unvaccinated people to go to work.

I guess there are multiple levels of mandatory, ranging from "you can't come into this bar" through "you can only buy your food at outdoor markets" and "our records show you have had no vaccine, here's a €100 fine per day until you do", to "we are going to tie you to this chair while we inject you". The further governments want to go along that scale, the more I worry that we may be turning into the baddies.

sTeamTraen wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 20, 2021 6:28 pm

I guess there are multiple levels of mandatory, ranging from "you can't come into this bar" through "you can only buy your food at outdoor markets" and "our records show you have had no vaccine, here's a €100 fine per day until you do", to "we are going to tie you to this chair while we inject you". The further governments want to go along that scale, the more I worry that we may be turning into the baddies.

Yes. I’m concerned about eroding the principle that people should give informed consent before any medical treatment. Consent hasn’t meaningfully been given if someone has been coerced through the prospect of loss of income or access to parts of society.

I’m also concerned about the prospect that large numbers of people who didn’t care about vaccination have become hard core anti-public health conspiracy theorists. The ones who are pissed off with being told they have to get vaccinated seem to be sucking up all the b.llsh.t they find online.

Of course I’m aware that there’s a pandemic and in utilitarian terms pressuring or coercing people may be a less bad outcome.

But there may be long term negative effects including a loss of trust in, and alienation from, doctors, scientists and others working on public health.

Woodchopper wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 20, 2021 7:03 pm

But there may be long term negative effects including a loss of trust in, and alienation from, doctors, scientists and others working on public health.

Yes - and we need to keep that trust for the "big one" (e.g. H5N1, H7N9 or similar)

Yes to all that, particularly given that (in the UK at least) many of the unvaccinated are at very low risk of serious outcomes if infected, and the evidence around the effects of vaccination on transmission seems insufficiently compelling to justify compulsion.

Nonetheless, if onerous measures are required to control outbreaks, it is entirely reasonable that the greatest burden of those measures should be on unvaccinated people.

Woodchopper wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 20, 2021 7:03 pm

sTeamTraen wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 20, 2021 6:28 pm

I guess there are multiple levels of mandatory, ranging from "you can't come into this bar" through "you can only buy your food at outdoor markets" and "our records show you have had no vaccine, here's a €100 fine per day until you do", to "we are going to tie you to this chair while we inject you". The further governments want to go along that scale, the more I worry that we may be turning into the baddies.

Yes. I’m concerned about eroding the principle that people should give informed consent before any medical treatment. Consent hasn’t meaningfully been given if someone has been coerced through the prospect of loss of income or access to parts of society.

Although having said that, in many countries it's already pretty much a requirement to send your kids to school (home schooling is actually illegal in Spain, for example), and very often schools impose mandatory vaccines for measles etc. So I guess that stretches the informed consent thing a bit.

sTeamTraen wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 20, 2021 8:20 pm

Although having said that, in many countries it's already pretty much a requirement to send your kids to school (home schooling is actually illegal in Spain, for example), and very often schools impose mandatory vaccines for measles etc. So I guess that stretches the informed consent thing a bit.

For diseases of childhood, children can't give informed consent, and while that would normally be delegated to parents/carers, there is an argument that sometimes the state acts in loco parentis. So the argument isn't about the principle of informed consent, it's about who vicariously grants that consent.

There's a rather unclear article about various vaccination mandates here.

How about if we just send everyone this. Ideally on NHS letterhead.

They should have OSHA inspectors with bean bag guns that say "violation" for workplace safety, and commando nurses with semi-auto vaccine machine guns to just take care of all the b.llsh.t right away!

Or maybe those ideas both rather suck. Too late, the conspiracy theories are already flying.

Merkel says "obligatory vaccinations" from February

... when it will be someone else's problem.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 02, 2021 2:24 pm

Merkel says "obligatory vaccinations" from February

... when it will be someone else's problem.

full Guardian story

Not good.

Vaccines are too ineffective against Delta transmission, let alone against Omi. Almost all the benefit of a dose goes to the individual recipient, little benefit goes to wider society.

lpm wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 03, 2021 12:05 am

Not good.

Vaccines are too ineffective against Delta transmission, let alone against Omi. Almost all the benefit of a dose goes to the individual recipient, little benefit goes to wider society.

I wouldn't go that far.

But still, I've major concerns about mandatory vaccination.

It looks like Covid will keep evolving and we're going to keep seeing new variants. If so, over the coming years the most important public health intervention is to ensure that every year as many people as possible are vaccinated. To get that governments need to focus upon building trust over the long term, in scientists, doctors and the public health authorities. I don't see how mandatory vaccination will do anything other than harm trust in all of them.

Mm, vaccinations reduce hospitalisations which is good for everyone. But not sure about making it mandatory, seems a bit of a blunt instrument for a complex, global problem.

Woodchopper wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 03, 2021 8:51 am

lpm wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 03, 2021 12:05 am

Not good.

Vaccines are too ineffective against Delta transmission, let alone against Omi. Almost all the benefit of a dose goes to the individual recipient, little benefit goes to wider society.

I wouldn't go that far.

But still, I've major concerns about mandatory vaccination.

It looks like Covid will keep evolving and we're going to keep seeing new variants. If so, over the coming years the most important public health intervention is to ensure that every year as many people as possible are vaccinated. To get that governments need to focus upon building trust over the long term, in scientists, doctors and the public health authorities. I don't see how mandatory vaccination will do anything other than harm trust in all of them.

Every measure like* this is an attempt to get a few more holdouts vaccinated. If it were completely voluntary, in the sense of no advantages for the vaccinated (or no disadvantages for the unvaccinated, whichever way around you want to see it) we'd all be at a much lower take-up rate.

I don't like the idea of mandatory covid vaccination either but then jesus f.ck get the f.cking vaccine already what's the matter with you f.ck's sake.

* - firstly they were along the lines of "doing x requires either vaccination or regular negative testing and we know that regular negative testing is a hassle" and they're heading towards negative testing not being enough for certain "non-essential" activities in many countries.