Not sure where your child will be going to college. My kids’ university was actually open to everyone last fall with mandated on-campus housing for the first year class if you chose to come to campus. They did a very good job with managing Covid too; no person-to-person contact in the dorms or classrooms at least through the first two quarters. I think this was a fantastic example of “can-do;” in fact, I didn’t even come up with the idea not to let Covid dictate our life but to figure out a work-around. It was our university’s epidemiologist who came up with their system to, in her words, “create safe places for people to be able to get on with their lives and coexist with Covid. Not just stay home.” And Dr. Emily Landon should know what she’s talking about; as university epidemiologist for the University of Chicago and University of Chicago Medicine she helped advise the city of Chicago in Covid safety measures.
Actually - yes we do. I think many would have no issue with full approval from the FDA and a statement from state health departments. After all, they are the ones entrusted to public health, not universities, work places, or CC forums! And they have solid judicial backing to flex their power here. They just haven’t because the vaccine is EUA. They’ve punted to the large institutions to do the work and it’s, frankly, a tad cowardly, IMO.
Sure. But here in the good ol’ US of A a lot of people can and do say a lot of things. We have diversity of thought in this country and an open forum with which to speak and persuade others. There are some who think those forums should be shut down - perhaps they fear “an excess of democracy” such as some of our Founding Fathers feared when arguing over the Constitution. Elites will always try to shut down the hoi polloi.
No - I never meant you were “smarter than thou” for those efforts! Forgive me. I think I was referring to the tendency to want to change others because we just know better than they do - my point was that other adults are not our children, they are adults and they know how to live their lives. We might not like their choices, but if they don’t harm us, so what? (If they do harm us that’s a different matter and of course when we are referring to greater goods such as the public health it sometimes requires a closer look at whose toes should be stepped on and when).
I never said the government should censor those people. I was pointing out that not everyone is acting in good faith and people have been persuaded to act outside their own best interest and outside the best interest of their loved ones and their community by lies, misinformation, and the worst kind of propaganda.
Or question their morality, or that they are horrible people, or uninformed, or ‘uneducated’. It’s the assumptions, the imposition and the judgement that I find disconcerting. I’d love to believe most are as altruistic as they claim, but I am a skeptic. Thank you for your post.
This thread was started as a place to address this:
"Do you have a parent, spouse, family member who is showing reluctance to getting the coronavirus vaccine?
Any tips or information you can share?
NO ANTI VACCINE! Tips or helpful information!"
And yet in the last few days has become a repository of anti-vaccine rumors and misinformation. Huh. Wonder why?
My friends in Lebanon and South Africa are begging for the vaccine. SA has had to move to tighter restrictions and curfews because of the spread of COVID. My son is spending $1200 to fly home to get the vaccine. It does upset me that so many people in this country are relying on others to slow down the spread of the virus. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
As a matter of fact, internalizing the externality used to be something you learn in first year econ grad school - probably undergrad now. It’s called the Coase Theorum. You can pay the polluter not to pollute, polluters can buy and sell rights to pollute, and so forth. Any way you look at it, you get the most efficient outcome. In fact, our state governor has caught on (as have others) by actively bribing people to get vaccinated. Their motives might be pure, or less than pure. In any case, they seem not to be opting for “Pick One” - perhaps it’s either unpopular with the electorate or they are afraid people will confuse it for the State Lottery
Another tidbit from KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor Dashboard | KFF : Among race/ethnicity, Black people are most likely to be hesitant (“wait and see”), but least likely to be strongly opposed to getting the vaccine (“only if required” or “definitely not”).
JB, just FYI, there’s a thread about where to retire outside the US. You know, just in case. We are many years away from retirement, but my H. has been warned. Ha.
I would ask you who isn’t acting in good faith and what are they saying to demonstrate that? You’d have to provide some examples because those are actually accusations. Further, many will counter with their own examples of “bad faith” and “propaganda” on the part of our public health leaders. There’s a lot of info. out there and people from all sides can pick and use as they see fit. Best just to use calm rationale discussion and perhaps learn something from all the data and information flowing in, than assume the worst about people.
Externalities have been included in introductory economics courses for decades. Of course, many of societies’ rules have to do with managing the conflicts caused by externalities. Even in ancient times, societies realized that acts like murder and theft caused negative externalities on others and therefore should be regulated.
Obviously, exposing others to contagious diseases causes negative externalities on others.
How much would you pay people to clean up after their dogs if the dogs leave something in front of your house?
Do our public health leaders and executives see it this way? Most are concerned about the overall trends in public health, not whether it’s fair that some are “doing more” than others to support a public good. I mean, if it really were the case that we should distribute that sort of responsibility equally, then let’s do so for ALL public goods including our interstate system (toll roads), our public parks (charge admission that captures the true cost of maintaining) and our military ($2,138 per US citizen per year, cash/check/MO).
In fact, our public leaders, health and otherwise, are actually worried about the public good - like whether the hospital system can handle the number of cases and so forth.
Same with universities - they aren’t so worried about mandating fairness as much as they just want to get back to in-person teaching, learning and research. The state health departments can certainly mandate the Covid vaccine to everyone if it’s a huge public health concern. It’s not like health departments having done that in the past - and they are backed up by the courts.
Small nit: while all 50 states have mandatory vaccine requirements for kids to attend school, not sure that they have mandatory vaccine laws for adults. So yes, States could mandate the covid vaccine once FDA gives full approval, but that would require Legislative action in most if not all states; in other words, not sure Health Departments have the legal authority today to mandate to adults.
Theft would be a transaction from one to another. Murder might be an externality or not, depending on context. You don’t need to have an externality to impose penalties because theft has historically been considered a moral wrong more than a negative externality. However, one can probably show that even the ancients were rather pragmatic and understood things like the social good.
I’m sure that anyone worried about this can work out a deal with anyone they are afraid might be an offender (inadvertent or otherwise). Again, our state governors seem to recognize this.
there is a simpler solution: post their photo on your local FB or Nextdoor.com. Seems to work pretty well around here.
It’s not hard to come up with a (theoretical) solution to the Covid/Vaccine problem: 1) if you are unvaccinated and you catch Covid, you must pay a fine to compensate those you might have inadvertently infected. Or 2) pay people to get vaccinated. As you can see from what states are doing, the latter is a LOT easier to implement and gets around the privacy laws.
