Texas opened vaccinations to all on March 29th. It’s safe to assume prior to this date it was the older, healthcare, first responder group which was vaccinated. Also, assuming on March 29th the mRNA vaccines were the most available - if you got in line on March 29th and followed protocol you’d be ‘fully vaxed’ and protected by April 1st. So - wouldn’t MOST of the deaths prior to April 1st be among the unvaccinated? (Actually, since it takes about 2 weeks to go from infected to critical wouldn’t most death prior to April 15th be pre-vaccine?)
Wait, what? If you got your first vaccine on March 29, went back for your second vaccine 14 days later (21 days for Moderna), then waited for two weeks before you could assume you were “fully vaccinated,” how do you figure you are “fully vaxxed and protected” by April 1?
…until they are begging for a vaccine, or hooked up to a ventilator, about to die.
No one is okay with dying. 99.78%=750,000+ moms, dads, brothers, uncles, sisters, aunts, cousins, friends dead. People are not percentages. Why roll out this percentage as though it’s really not a big deal?
And let’s go there again: why bother at all to protect people? There should be no restrictions on personal freedom. Why not let people drive drunk? Personal choice. Why not let people randomly fire their weapons? Personal choice. Why bother to make us take off our shoes at the airport? I should have a right to keep my shoes on. Why have ANY public health and safety measures? Darwinism should be allowed to do it’s thing.
So to bring this back to “some people are okay with the 99.78% chance…,” the problem is that those people are taking away other people’s choices. We need safety measures to protect people from those who think their personal choice matters more than that of everyone else who doesn’t want to get sick or die.
Well, for one thing there are laws against drunk driving and firing weapons dangerously. There isn’t a law against making a personal health choice. Unfortunately, the protection of freedom and liberty can result in some bad choices and harm to others. It’s all a trade off, and much of the disagreement here has to do with where you come down on the trade off.
Yes, there is. There are lots of laws against making personal health choices. Texas’ new abortion restrictions are a great example. Illegally driving drunk is another.
I can get drunk if I want to, even though it’s bad for my health. Why can’t I also drive the car while I’m drunk? Because we need to protect the health of the greater public. Being hit by a drunk driver doesn’t protect the health of the person who is hit. So yes, we need laws.
When a large number of people are adversely affected by someone else’s personal health choice, the public needs to be protected.
In some cases, spreading a communicable disease can be illegal and prosecutable, though it is mostly used in intentional or extremely reckless cases as described at Is it Illegal to Get Someone Sick on Purpose? | Nolo .
Even ancient societies had rules that tried to prevent the spread of communicable diseases, although some rules were based on incomplete understanding of the diseases and their contagiousness, and there may not have been means of cure or other mitigation available at the time. Clearly, they did understand the concept of having to balance conflicting rights (A’s freedom to do X versus B’s freedom not to have unwanted harm imposed on B due to A doing X).
Underage drinking and smoking laws? Prescriptions needed for various drugs and others drugs simply being illegal? Laws requiring other vaxxes to attend school, join the military, or work in health care settings?
What are those if not “personal health choice” laws?
One can be a hermit in the back woods and do whatever they please, but when one wants to be a member of society, there really are expectations that are often enforced.
I think things would be more clear from a legal standpoint if the states enacted laws regarding the vaccines because there’s no authority for that the federal level. Laws regarding indoor smoking and drunk driving (since those are the examples used) are set at the state not the federal level.
I’m surprised states like NY, Illinois and California haven’t passed COVID vaccine laws yet.
small nit: technically, there is no TX law prohibiting the personal choice to obtain an abortion. The law just allows providers to be sued if they perform one.
Yes. good catch. So someone who got Pfizer would get their second dose April 14th and be fully vaxed May 1st. (and even later for Moderna)
But this drives home the point re: Texas numbers even harder. Counting all un-vaxxed deaths starting January 2021 when he option to be fully vaxxed was only available to those over 18 by May 1st is rather disingenuous reporting. The 10 months of data includes 5 months where full vaccination wasn’t even possible for the majority of the population. Of COURSE there’d be higher death numbers amongst the unvaccinated.
Vaccines work. We are seeing the evidence…so why the need to numbers in this manner. it’s rather sleazy.
Not to mention all the laws criminalizing HIV transmission:
It seems to me that when our legislatures feel like criminalizing spreading a disease around, they have no problem getting right to it. Somehow, behaviors that facilitate the spread of covid don’t seem to be as big a legislative emergency. Can’t imagine why.
I can imagine why. It is an air-born communicable virus versus a virus (HIV) that is passed through bodily fluids. The HIV criminalization laws that I have seen revolve around someone knowing they were HIV positive and having sex or sharing needles without disclosing HIV status to their partners. Just as one example with Covid-19, do you really want to criminalize a 10 year old who knows he or she has a mild case of Covid-19 and ends up passes it on to someone else through reckless behavior that ends up harming someone else? This is slippery slope territory. What happens when someone passes any air-born communicable disease to someone who is adversely affected by that disease? That sort of law would incentivize not getting tested at all for any mild cases of Covid-19 to have plausible deniability. I would sure like to know how you would legislate Covid-19 criminalization, but I am pretty sure you would have unintended consequences occur.
To reduce the toxicity of “de-toxing” treatments, maybe someone could post a benign treatment (a shaman describing a dance that will detox or a detoxing meditation). I don’t mind if vaccine-reluctant folks bow to the mandates and do silly things but I’d prefer that they not also harm themselves in the process.
As mentioned in Is it Illegal to Get Someone Sick on Purpose? | Nolo , acts like spitting or coughing on someone else to transmit a communicable disease have been prosecuted under various laws, although it appears that most such prosecutions involve intentional or extremely reckless cases.
As usual, there are gray areas where there is discretion on the part of enforcement and prosecution, since rules cannot be written to cover every possible situation in exacting detail. Of course, such discretion sometimes gets used inappropriately, such as greater enforcement against people of some race or ethnicity, rather than against those committing the more serious acts.
Probably already seen with respect to quarantine requirements or advisories, which is why some acts like travel have come with testing requirements (although they may not be as effective as intended).
This is genius. You just have to get to them with the tabloid fodder first with something benign. Tyrannical boss has a mask mandate? No problem, just wear this bracelet to clear CO2 buildup. As your blood pumps under it, powerful CO2-zapping rays clear the dangerous buildup that occurs without protection. Available in children’s sizes and men’s styles with popular motifs. HSA approval pending.
