I pay huge amounts of money into a system that spends billions and billions of dollars to take care of people who are obese, who have diabetes, who have high blood pressure, who have heart attacks, who have strokes, who develop cancers, all because of poor lifestyle and behavioral choices. Those same people take up ICU beds everyday that someone else might need. But until Covid no one ever discussed it. There has been zero PSA about becoming healthier, about losing weight, about getting more exercise, eating better, quitting smoking, thereâs been zero shaming for people who have diabetes, who are overweight, who have high blood pressure, who smoke. Whereâs the outrage about people continuing to smoke, drink excessively, eat McDonaldâs, pizza, ice cream etcâŠabout addressing those things to help decrease the number of severe Covid cases in the hospitals. Maybe we should just outlaw all those things so the population as a whole will be healthier and cost everyone less.
Nope. Because if you didnât get those boosters you werenât banned from society. It was encouraged not mandated.
I can see mandates working for public schools, but not for private ones. Work places would also have some mandates that could work and some where small employers could not enact because it is hard enough to get employees. But how would you enact something where all shopping locations and eateries banned unvaccinated people?
It surprises me that many feel this way, because I believe that the vaccines are doing the job for the vaccinated, especially when it comes to serious complications from a Breakthrough Covid infections. Some of the largest swathes on unvaccinated at this point are among the same young people who serve coffee at Starbucks or work in grocery stores, Walmart, etc.
Because no vaccine is 100% protective. Because we care about reducing cases and reducing the toll on our communities. Because we know that there are people who are too young to get vaccinated and others who are (legit) medically unable, immune compromised, or otherwise at risk.
We donât know anything about @TexasTiger2 and his (not even sure if it is a him?) relationship with their father.
But what if his father lives in another country and he literally can not get to him. Then itâs hard for us to admonish a choice that that a person with a parent in the states has.
Or any other reason there is for not seeing a parent. Itâs not for us to speculate or make critical of
For the record, I want everyone vaccinated but Iâm concerned at the level of vitriol and contempt that accompanies many of the discussions of how to get people vaccinated and what happens if people choose not to get it. The reality is that pretty much every unvaccinated person will get Covid and the number of those people shrinks every day. Is it frustrating, annoying and obnoxious that they wonât get vaccinated? Absolutely!
I didnât know anyone was being banned from society. But go ahead, take what a few people say on a discussion board out of frustration and pretend thatâs happening anywhere. Sort of like when people talked about being âlocked downâ here in the US. Nothing like that happened anywhere. We were always free to leave our homes.
SF has successfully required vax for entry into indoor places, restaurants, etc
Not yet, but itâs happening. Theyâve already started by banning people from going to school, making a living, eating in restaurants, bars, attending movies, concerts etc⊠maybe soon you wonât be able to grocery shop or go to a doctorâs office.
And the good part of that is more people are getting vaxxed.
Iâm not at all comfortable living in a society where people can choose to put other people at risk in the same way my ladâs Libertarian friend said people should be allowed to choose whether they want to pollute the world or not. Itâs my world too. Their pollution doesnât affect just them. Neither does their vax choice.
The difference for me @vpa2019, at least, is that those conditions are hard to fix, and can take years of work to address obesity, diabetes, etc. One event didnât cause it, and wonât cure it. In the case of covid, one quick shot can mostly prevent it, and is asking very little of people compared to substantial lifestyle changes.
Adding to what Libertarian friend told my guy⊠he said that a war would break out due to the govât suppressing millions of people from choosing what they wanted. He seemed to truly believe that was going to happen.
Thatâs not the world I want to live it. Iâd be quite content if I learned he was going to leave our area and head somewhere else to have his âfreedom.â A war. Over a vaccine to try to save lives. Yeah, thatâs the answer.
I agree in part, but when youâre talking about costs of healthcare I think itâs legitimate to discuss those other conditions because theyâre exacerbating the cases of severe Covid and thus costs. If we want to cut down on severe Covid disease (as well as many others) in the future those conditions should be actively addressed now.
Granted they canât all be cured immediately but I think public emphasis on improving overall health is worthwhile and Covid has provided a concrete example of why.
Sure. Or like those without measles or chickenpox vaxxes. When there was an outbreak of measles at Disneyland, those who werenât vaccinated couldnât go in. Itâs a privilege to go in, not a right. They donât have to get the vaccines and no one is going to make them, but they are going to lose some privileges and going to work or school or fun places like concerts are just some of them.
You have a right to an education k-12, but the state can decide the safest way is to require vaccinations for those who want to attend in person and provide alternatives to those who donât want to be vaccinated.
I do think the vaccine protects me and I had my children vaccinated against everything when they were young and right up through college. I felt they were safe, but not invincible. I didnât allow them to play with other kids who had chickenpox or the measles or the flu just because we had had the vaccinations. They knew how to swim and I felt they were safe around a pool, but still didnât let them swim without me being there.
Belts and suspenders.
Weâre vaxxed but still wear masks and stand 6â apart when possible. If we see someone sneezing, itâs probably allergies but still we stand back. Not being around unvaccinated for covid people is another tool to stay healthy. My sister currently has covid. Doesnât know where she got it but sheâs a 5th grade teacher, soâŠ
At school our health insurance is addressing all of these issues (at their cost) by providing classes, both for knowledge and exercise, offering annual blood tests checking for the basics, consultations with doctors when results come back out of line, and exercise groups, etc. They know their paying for these things will save money down the line. Theyâve done this for a few years now (10ish I would guess). Itâs not just a âsince Covidâ thing.
Itâs not any different than providing vaccinations. Cheaper fix.
Going to work is now a privilege? Ok, letâs see how that works out for the country.
Fortune 500 definitively push their employees to become healthier by offering financial incentives to do so.
Iâm trying to figure out whether thereâs a missing /s here. You must be living in a different universe than I am, because Iâve heard massive complaints about all of this, including the PSAs, including controversies about companies forcing employees to log exercise/diet info or pay higher premiums or be fired, for literally decades. Itâs why Iâve spent so much of my life pointing out the financial/freedom/opportunity inequities that lead to such disparate âlifestyle choicesâ, also why thereâs been so much federal attention to âfood desertsâ and school lunches. You might remember half a country freaking out about Michelle Obamaâs efforts at reducing child obesity, and why that was a focus.
In the US, employment is and has been generally treated as a privilege, not a right, in that there is no guarantee that you will get a job or keep the one that you have. Most employment in the US is âat willâ, meaning that either party can terminate the employment relationship at any time for any reason or no reason (except for a small list of illegal reasons).
People with those conditions were not overwhelming our healthcare capacities. People needing knee surgeries or gallbladder surgeries werenât pushed off for weeks or months at a time because an obese patient or a smoker was in the hospital. Someone t-boned by a red light runner didnât have to be transferred to another state because all the trauma beds were filled by diabetics or hypertensives.
This is a false equivalency. Yes, those conditions are often (but not always) lifestyle-related, but they are not overwhelming our hospitals and stretching our HCW to their limits such that they are quitting or subject to making errors due to extremely unsafe patient ratios. They are not forcing hospitals to forgo important âelectiveâ surgeries (not talking about boob jobs and facelifts, but surgeries that are not emergent but nevertheless still important). They are not prevented by an easy two step vaccination process.
I donât advocate for denying care for the unvaccinated should they need hospitalization. But the conditions you mentioned have not to date shown a comparable drain on our healthcare system.