Theft is not a transaction in the usual sense because it is not voluntary for the one whose stuff is stolen. This is similar to having dog waste or used automotive fluids dumped in front of your house, or being exposed to a contagious disease – these are not transactions in the usual sense because you are an involuntary participant.
2 Likes
I think the way it works is that states mandate power to the local health board to impose compulsatory vaccines - you are probably correct that’s state law at work there. We’ve seen some executive action this year that could be construed as a fairly broad interpretation of “emergency powers” but I doubt an executive would mandate a state-wide vaccine for everyone under that act. It will surely vary by state as well. State statute guides authority to mandate school vaccines as well, I thought, although in that case there’s probably authority given to determine which ones. In any case, don’t some states at least have this in law already? I thought so but might not be correct?
The proper authorities for determining whether a compulsatory program should be implemented would still be the health department, and the government could police that decision. I don’t know if a state would pass a law mandating the Covid vaccine directly.
Theft is still a transaction as it’s an interchange between two parties. May be compulsatory or voluntary.
Dog waste on my yard is not a transaction. Someone did something and in that process imposed upon me. That’s an externality.
delete - duplicate
I am grieved. ETA: perhaps if you think about the purpose of public authorities - why they are supposed to be doing the job they do, who hires them and why - that might help. As a mom, I might care about who gets how many jimmies on the cupcake. But I’d argue that this isn’t the role of the public authorities.
I don’t disagree with the data you linked - and I have much respect for your facility with available data and your insistence on data based argument. But I feel you are missing my point, so I’ll try to re-articulate it.
There are two main political tents in this country. Obviously there are more than two kinds of people, but nonetheless there is a lot of effort to classify people into these two existing buckets in order to establish something like causality. I’m trying to say: I do not believe political affiliation is the cause of vaccine reluctance. I believe there is another cause. (In my circles, it seems plain that the cause is distrust of the medical industry. But I have only anecdote to support this.) As you have shown, there is a correlation to political affiliation, but I argue that it is not a helpful correlation to pursue - unless the goal is only to criticize the other party. If we are actually concerned with vaccine reluctance, we should recognize this line of thinking is not fruitful - perhaps it is even detrimental - and instead seek to understand the real cause or causes.
5 Likes
As the recent posts have been dominated by a handful of users, I have put the thread on slow mode until morning. My hope is this will allow other users to join the conversation and prompt the more exuberant users to be strategic in postings.
16 Likes
State health departments can only act when delegated that authority by state statue or state constitution. If a state does not have a mandatory vax law for adults, a state health department has no authority to require one. (The controlling case is from 1905 and back then only 11 states had mandatory vax laws for adults.)
2 Likes
It’s not, LOL. Letting your dog poop on the public walk or - worse - someone’s property w/o cleaning up is akin to going out and partying w/o a mask and then visiting unvaccinated granny. It’s showing complete disregard for those around you. That’s why there are dog poop laws. Should there be mandated vaccine laws? Perhaps - if there is a legitimate public health reason for it. But that’s not the same thing as YOU need to be vaccinated for ME. That’s akin to a forced transaction - ie forced labor.
It is as much a transaction as theft is – the one leaving the dog waste is stealing the service of waste disposal / mitigation from you (or whoever would have to clean it up or put up with it). Of course, neither is really a transaction in the usual sense, in that it is something that at least one party neither consents to nor is an active participant in.
“Legitimate public health reasons” for vaccine requirements in schools etc. are all about using the positive externality of vaccination to protect others who are not able to get the personal benefit from vaccination.
So is it forced labor for a college to require unvaccinated people to put on masks, maintain social distancing, submit to frequent testing, and be subject to quarantine if exposed, since these require extra effort on the part of the student in question in order to help protect other students?
1 Like
Look up the definitions of “transaction” and “externality” to get a better idea. When someone does something and in that process others have to bear a cost that’s an externality, not a transaction. Transactions are between parties - what one gains the other loses (and so money can go between parties to compensate but that’s not required).
With a public good, one benefits regardless of whether one pays for it. Same with public health and vaccination. One needn’t be vaccinated to benefit. That’s not the same thing as compelling Person A to get vaccinated so that Person B benefits. When Person A gets vaccinated, it’s usually so that Person A benefits - and also Person B since the vaccination is a positive externality. The problem with compelling those who don’t need the vaccine to get the vaccine is that, basically, there’s nothing in it for them - just for others.
Actually, yes, there is a bit of “forced labor” mentality behind some of these university mandates for students only, because the students are primarily being vaccinated or tested for the benefit of the faculty. Last academic year, all were under the same basic rules (at least at my kids’ uni) but that won’t be the case at many universities going forward. Now there are obviously different considerations w/r/t employees than students. But universities have been very eager to step up with their mandates long before the state health departments are saying anything. The latter might be restricted to wait till FDA approval - not sure. Of course, no one need REMAIN at their uni but that’s a bit of a raw deal for them. Do this or transfer isn’t the best way to maintain a good relationship with the student once they graduate.
2 Likes
I, too, had a nasty reaction to Shigrex and am used to my DH rarely getting sick and barely being sick at those times, but I am prone to catching everything and feeling sick much longer.
I had the painful swollen lymph glands after the first shot, but the second shot really knocked me for a loop. After the initial 8-10 days of being useless for anything, I continued to have myalgia/fatigue/malaise for at least 8 weeks at which point we guessed it was a total body inflammatory reaction and I am on a 4 week course of daily anti-inflammatories. That is helping, I will be interested to see what happens when the four weeks is up & I stop taking them.
However, I also figure I would have had an even more miserable time if I caught actual Covid, so despite feeling lousy and all the time it’s taken, I am glad to have the vaccine.
I’ve also enjoyed the masking/sanitizing/isolation which, I believe, has allowed me to not have a two month couch/cold for the last 18 months!
I, personally, know one person, an 80 year old neighbor who was hospitalized and nearly ventilated, pre-vaccine release. He actually refused the ventilator, so I guess he was borderline. He is doing well now, thankfully.
I know one person, a physician, who, prior to be vaccinated was exposed, in their bubble of 8, to a person who’d chosen to go to Thanksgiving festivities and had a family member test positive immediately after. I believe everyone in that bubble, except the person I know, ended up testing positive within two weeks of exposure. But then, that physician tested positive about 3 months after being fully vaccinated. No rhyme or reason to it.
2 Likes
Theft falls into that definition of externality. Someone steals something from you (without your consent or participation), and in that process you have to bear a cost (loss of what is stolen). Same with someone leaving dog waste in front of your house.
Whether or not you also consider these acts to be “transactions” does not prevent them from having negative externalities on those who are affected.
With a high level of vaccination, someone can free-ride on the public good of herd immunity, but if there are enough free-riders who choose not to vaccinate, then there is no public good of herd immunity, so vaccination becomes necessary on a personal level if one wants to avoid the disease. Of course, the losers in the latter situation are the unlucky people who fail to get good immunity from vaccination.
Which brings us back to it being a choice of whom to prioritize, those who most need herd immunity to be protected from the disease, versus those who choose not to vaccinate for non-medical reasons.
Your suggestion to attach liability if an unvaccinated person causes others to get the disease makes sense theoretically, but is difficult to do in practice (imagine the resistance to contact tracing if it means liability).
Shaming works.
Or misinformed.
And helpful or not, MOST reluctance IS associated with a particular political bent. Being, originally, from the midwest, I know quite a few folks who have declined to get the vaccine. They were all science deniers before Covid and the medical information they’ve gotten from their politicians, and news sources, especially conspiracy theory youtube podcasts, has made them even more so.
There are a handful of logical reasons to avoid the vaccine, including, in some cases, fear. But all of the anti vaxxers I’ve talked to about it have based their decision on misinformation or downright crazy ideas/sources.
Again, only an anecdote, but my (admittedly small) sample makes me think that those who have declined or are waiting based on any kind of logical reason are a relatively small fraction of the unvaccinated.
4 Likes
You need to pick up what your dog left on my yard. And since it’s not your yard, it’s for me.
1 Like
An externality is basically a side effect. A transaction is not. But we won’t agree on this regardless of what the definition says 
With an externality you will always have a free rider problem, and yes “enough” vaccination becomes necessary in order for immunity to reach and remain a public good. But this is easily solved simply by paying everyone to be vaccinated. No need to prioritize some over others or force some to do something on behalf of others.
Agree - Can’t be done, most likely. Much better to bribe as state governments are trying to do, but they aren’t paying enough, most likely.
That’s refreshing, for a change.
No doubt that cohort exists - and I don’t think labeling people helps - but perhaps some may simply opt to trade the not-yet-known risks associated with the vaccine for the imminent risk of catching/not catching? Maybe for many, it’s a conscientious decision based on the scarcity of available data?
Forgive me, I have more questions than answers.
4 Likes
You have provided an interesting addendum. Someone who, say, breaks and enters or trespasses on private property and in the act of doing so infects someone else with Covid should, indeed be held liable. There was a news story recently of an irate woman who deliberately coughed on a cancer survivor in line in a public space and was, rightfully, charged with assault. Those are serious issues that probably don’t get enough attention in the press.
However, that’s not what we have been discussing. Surely the vulnerable have the right on their own property not to have any unvaccinated person. But they don’t own the space around where they walk when out and about that may well be public space and available to all. Or it may be private space with its own set of rules that may or may not work for the vulnerable’s sense of safety. As long as someone isn’t coming up and assaulting or aggressing - say, deliberately violating someone’s socially distanced space - or otherwise violating the rules, the vulnerable simply are not entitled to make anyone do anything to accommodate them. Including insisting that all who can do so, get vaccinated. Unfortunately for the vulnerable, they are best off taking their own precautions if they wish to go out and about.
3 Likes
Offhand I know a dozen people who have had Covid, ranging in age from 25-96, living on 3 continents and in 6 states. Two died, one had a massive stroke (unfortunately while the hospitals in their locale were overrun and it took hours to get them into the ER), one still has lingering effects, two were quite ill even though not hospitalized and the others had mild to cases and are doing okay now. Almost everyone I know has been vaccinated and the only side-effects lasting longer than a few days were swollen lymph nodes that lasted about a month. Oh and one has become pregnant since being vaccinated. All anecdotal. But someone up this thread laid out the numbers. Massively in favor of vaccination if you would like to avoid illness and long-term effects. Massively. I’m not going to repeat the numbers here because we all know that data doesn’t change behavior.
And to get back to the original purpose of this thread. The people I know who have gone from saying they wouldn’t get vaccinated to actually getting vaccinated have been moved by conversation with their own doctor, peer pressure when everyone in their social group is getting vaccinated, and/or recognition of the needs of someone vulnerable with whom they have a relationship. But none of these people were insisting that the vaccine was somehow more dangerous than Covid to start with. They were people who felt that their own “superior” immune system would protect them or they knew people who had adverse reactions to other vaccines in the past. So they were open to conversation, not dug into a whole worldview that involved opposing this particular vaccine.
If you want to believe unverified information go ahead. But acknowledge that you are acting out of fear of some unknown and unlikely reaction, not out of any kind of logical or rational assessment of the risks you take either way. And no I am not “labeling” people. I am stating what the current evidence shows. And there is no scarcity of data. Millions of people have been infected and millions of people have been vaccinated. Legitimate health organizations are collecting and sorting through the data and jumping to react to anything that may possibly be an issue with the vaccines. There is no evidence that they are hiding information from the public.
By the way, those who think getting Covid is no big deal. Have you seen this study? https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/new-covid-study-hints-at-long-term-loss-of-brain-tissue-dr-scott-gottlieb-warns.html
Those who have legitimate medical counter-indications are, of course, acting rationally to not be vaccinated at this time.
10 Likes