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Thread: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

  1. #81
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    It's true that fewer people die in motor vehicle accidents if they wear their seatbelts, and it's true that fewer people involved in motorcycle crashes die if they wear helmets. But I tell you--the cost to health care personnel, emergency response personnel, and the taxpayer cost to provide the infrastructure for those who survive if they didn't wear seatbelts or helmets is huge. I never even see those patients, but it's all asses and elbows to test their blood, issue emergency blood for transfusion and perform some specialized coagulation testing on these idiots often leaves me exhausted even before my shift ends. There's a huge ripple effect among the survivors, to the point that I'm actually relieved if the only fatalities are victims found at the site of the accident. There's a whole lot that doesn't need to happen if the victim is found dead. I know that's kind of grim, but there you have it.

    I'm even more bitter about preventable infectious diseases. I got all my COVID shots (2 plus a booster), but viruses being viruses and humans being morons and selfish jerks, I know that I'm only less at risk than an unvaccinated individual. I know that should I be infected, I'll probably feel like shit warmed over for a couple of weeks and then be mostly done with it. But it could also kill me. A fully vaccinated local virologist did contract COVID and died quite quickly. He should never have been put at risk because others won't moderate their behavior. 4 years ago, I came down with H3N2 type A influenza because one of my jackass coworkers didn't get vaccinated and came into work sick. I would rather have worked without him even on one of his best days, because he was basically useless even healthy. I'd been vaccinated for flu, just as I always am. The flu was a poor match for the circulating strain, and it was a nasty, sometimes lethal strain. Between the vaccine and getting to the doctor for tamiflu within hours of symptom onset, I wasn't so ill I couldn't get out of bed for two weeks. And more importantly, I lived. Not everyone did. I truly believe that had I not been vaccinated, my jackass coworker would have killed me with his choice not to get the vaccine.

    Bottom line: I don't give a damn about philosophy or human rights when it comes to vaccine-preventable diseases. Get the damn shot(s).

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    TSherbs (December 1st, 2021)

  3. #82
    Senior Member dneal's Avatar
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    So you're ok with a government mandating something that will assuredly kill some of its citizens?
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Can a vaccinated person contract COVID?
    Can a vaccinated person transmit COVID?
    Yes in both cases. The odds of the first and subsequently the second are both lower than for unvaccinated people and thus the population risk is lower.

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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Quote Originally Posted by dneal View Post
    So you're ok with a government mandating something that will assuredly kill some of its citizens?
    Yes, and you are as well apparently. Why is is okay in the situation you discribed but not here?

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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Quote Originally Posted by dneal View Post
    So you're ok with a government mandating something that will assuredly kill some of its citizens?
    yep, it's like mandating seatbelts for car passengers: the wearing of them will, statistically, result in the deaths of a few individuals.

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    TFarnon (December 4th, 2021)

  8. #86
    Senior Member welch's Avatar
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Quote Originally Posted by dneal View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by welch View Post

    I read the article you cited. It has nothing to do with utilitarianism.
    A true vaccine mandate raises the question. It is a logical consequence. It is utilitarian ethical theory.

    Your argument is a straw man, and a deflection.

    -edit-

    Here are the logical propositions derived:

    A - The COVID vaccine has a mortality rate of eight in one million (according to one study).
    B - Some governments are imposing a vaccine mandate.
    C - A true and complete mandate has no exceptions.
    D - The purpose of a vaccine mandate is to protect as many as possible (Utilitarian ethical theory).
    The study you cited did not say this. It did not say that "the vaccine has a mortality rate of 8 in one million". The study you cited said that some number of frail elderly had died after taking the vaccine. The study you cite did not draw a link between the vaccine and those deaths. That is why I posted what the study actually says. This is not semantics, nor is it mere words. You have made up a foundation from which to slide into a discussion of utilitarian ethics.

    Countries, states, counties, and cities off Covid vaccines as a solution to a public health problem. You might claim that this is an exercise in "utilitarian ethics", but no one I've read has defended vaccine mandates as allowable under utilitarianism. In the US, communities have often quarantined to defend public health. About 1791, Philadelphia quarantined neighborhoods and maybe even the brand new State of New Jersey as a way to stop an outbreak of Yellow Fever. That was at the suggestion of Dr. Benjamin Rush. Massachusetts town meetings shut down brothels as a nuisance to public morals and a risk to public health.

    Did you read your own article before leaping to claim something or other about utilitarianism?

    Quote Originally Posted by dneal View Post
    So you're ok with a government mandating something that will assuredly kill some of its citizens?
    How do you know that vaccines "will assuredly kill some"? That is not what your own study says.
    Last edited by welch; December 1st, 2021 at 04:34 PM.

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    TSherbs (December 1st, 2021)

  10. #87
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Quote Originally Posted by dneal View Post
    @TSherbs - Not trying to be snarky, but you pop in and make superficial statements. Then you proclaim how you're not interested in a discussion. Then you pop back in with more superficial statements. You do this often enough for me to make this comment on it. You seem to dismiss it as "we're just chatting, right?"

    But let's not use this section as an example. Let's point out your thread-shitting in some guy's Pelikan M800 for sale thread.

    Why would you be compelled to post something like that? You took a shit in the guy's thread, and then you denied any culpability. You seem kind of bitter, to be honest.

    But back on topic (somewhat). Welch went to great lengths to formulate an article that was not relevant. What premise did he show I misrepresented? It's quite clear that it was back of the envelope math. I said that. I said the numbers were arguable, but that it wasn't relevant to the salient point. How dense do you have to be to not get that? (that's a rhetorical question, by the way).

    Pick the study. Pick the number. I don't care what it is. If it's one or more, then the point still stands. Utilitarian ethics. If you don't know anything about that, and aren't interesting in learning; maybe this isn't the thread for you. Just sayin'...

    I'm not really interested in entertaining your drive-by, bitter, thread-shitting.
    So, is this some of your unbiased, untriggered posting that you laud while you denigrate others for their subjectivity and "triggered" responses. I don't claim to have not been an asshole on some threads. And we are all free to enter and leave a thread anytime we feel like it, including you (what the hell is a "drive-by" post in a back page of a discussion forum? I post here dozens and dozens of times, and I start threads. It's a ridiculous charge, dneal, born of some other grievance of yours). All I take from this is that you are angry getting the question from me (that is called a subjective, triggered response).

    You invited us to critique a premise if we saw fault. Welch had clearly posted a critique already that you had not responded to, and I thought that he had made a thorough and clear point--exactly what you usually call for and did in fact call for in this case.

  11. #88
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Quote Originally Posted by dneal View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Chuck Naill View Post
    Vaccines protect both.

    You’re the only one here who consistently struggles with discussing.
    Who initiates rhetoric and insult? ...
    A fair question for reflection.

  12. #89
    Senior Member dneal's Avatar
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Quote Originally Posted by Empty_of_Clouds View Post
    Can a vaccinated person contract COVID?
    Can a vaccinated person transmit COVID?
    Yes in both cases. The odds of the first and subsequently the second are both lower than for unvaccinated people and thus the population risk is lower.
    Thank you for addressing the questions, and I agree with your second sentence.
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

  13. #90
    Senior Member dneal's Avatar
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Quote Originally Posted by welch View Post

    The study you cited did not say this. It did not say that "the vaccine has a mortality rate of 8 in one million". The study you cited said that some number of frail elderly had died after taking the vaccine. The study you cite did not draw a link between the vaccine and those deaths. That is why I posted what the study actually says. This is not semantics, nor is it mere words. You have made up a foundation from which to slide into a discussion of utilitarian ethics.
    From the study:

    We aimed to estimate the mortality rate of COVID-19 vaccination. They're using VAERS. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

    Results: As of January 8, 2021, 55 deaths were reported, and the mortality rate of COVID-19 vaccination was 8.2 per million population.

    Quote Originally Posted by welch
    How do you know that vaccines "will assuredly kill some"? That is not what your own study says.
    See above. 8.2 per million. Eight point two deaths per one million population. This is not something peculiar to the COVID vaccine. Many vaccines have a small probability of death as an "adverse event"

    Now go back and look at my OP. See this sentence?

    "One study estimates the mortality rate for the vaccine is roughly 8 per million. The population of Austria is roughly 9 million. Back of the napkin math comes up with 72. There's lots of room for argument with that calculation and the study's estimate, but the specific number isn't that important."

    So again: If a government mandates all citizens have a vaccine administered that has death as an "adverse event" - pick the number, but it would have to be 1 or greater - then that government is directly and unequivocally responsible for that death.

    Why would a government do that? Presumably in an effort to save more lives than would be lost otherwise.

    That is precisely what utilitarian ethics are.

    That is precisely the hypothetical this thread addresses.

    This is not difficult to understand. It is difficult to accept, which is perhaps why so much mental masturbation has been taking place to get out of the dilemma.
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

  14. #91
    Senior Member dneal's Avatar
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Quote Originally Posted by TSherbs View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by dneal View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Chuck Naill View Post
    Vaccines protect both.

    You’re the only one here who consistently struggles with discussing.
    Who initiates rhetoric and insult? ...
    A fair question for reflection.
    But irrelevant if you're never going to actually reflect on it.
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

  15. #92
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Quote Originally Posted by dneal View Post
    It is difficult to accept, which is perhaps why so much mental masturbation has been taking place to get out of the dilemma.
    Does this "difficulty" speak for you, and not for those of us who answered your question easily and directly above?

    Several of us answered simply "yes, we would make the choice to have a very few statistically likely adverse effects, including death, in order to save the lives of tens of thousands of others." We don't see the dilemma as impassible, as you apparently do. Especially since we already, as a nation and members of States, accept other forms of regulation that occasionally--and predictably--cause adverse events, including death, as part of saving many thousands of others and their families and the society as a whole from the burden of managing the repercussions of large-scale illness or death.

    Take toll barriers on highways. We accept these because we accept the idea that usage tolls are a worthwhile form of payment to help maintain roads and keep them maintained and safe(r) for drivers. Yet we know that those barriers sometimes are involved in crashes and injury and/or death. Fortunately, the number of deaths and injuries is low enough that we don't become stuck in the dilemma of whether a state toll system can ONLY be utilized if we can guarantee that it will NEVER result in an injury or death.

    Even the government "mandate" that children attend schools, in some cases, and perhaps this is statistically predictable now, will result in additional child injuries or deaths. They may be injured on the way to school or in or on the school grounds (with another tragic case in the national news now).

    I don't know if these comparisons are the "masturbations" that you are referring to (rather pejoratively), but people here have been giving you their straight up answers without much being stuck in the "dilemma" that you are describing. Of course, governements must be mindful of the consequences of their mandates; no one is suggesting otherwise.

  16. #93
    Senior Member welch's Avatar
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Read your article, dneal.

    It counts deaths after a vaccination, but not by, or because of, or even [I]linked to[I] vaccination. Event_B might have happened after Event_A, but that does not prove that Event_A caused Event_B. Further, the researchers provide about two dozen "comorbidities" found in each of the dead. "Top reported comorbidities associated with deaths included hypertension, dementia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes, and heart failure. In addition, dementia was more likely to be associated with deaths vaccinated at long-term care facilities than at other locations. Top medications associated with deaths were pain relievers, fever reducers, and antihypertensives."

    Their deaths might have come from any one or a combination of the comorbidities, or from Covid itself. Were they dying when vaccinated? The numbers do not say. The study only confirms that older people are more likely to die, for whatever reason, than younger people.

    Here is the researchers' discussion:

    COVID-19 vaccine is safe in younger groups. The majority of the reported deaths were in people aged 85 and older and vaccinated at long-term care facilities; these patients are frail older people with serious underlying health conditions such as dementia, hypertension, heart failure, COPD, diabetes, anemia, and fall. In addition, these vulnerable patients are polypharmacy users. Certain vaccine-disease and vaccine-drug interactions might have contributed to or have worsened health outcomes of those already vulnerable populations. It is essential to monitor the allergic reactions following the vaccination that mainly occur within a short period of time for preventable risks (5). However, the mortality rate of 53.4 per million following COVID-19 vaccination among long-term care facility residents during the study period was much lower compared to the 2019 monthly all-cause mortality rate of 0.3% among adults aged 65 years or older (6), or the 30-day all-cause mortality rate of 21.5% among US nursing home residents with COVID-19 (7). Therefore, our data suggest that the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines far outweigh the potential risks in older frail populations (e.g., long-term care facilities), and our findings do not support actions to exclude older adults from being vaccinated as the Norwegian government did. Continued monitoring of COVID-19 vaccination among the older population, particularly those with comorbidities and medications reported in this study, however, is warranted.
    Note "Certain vaccine-disease and vaccine-drug interactions might have contributed to or have worsened health outcomes of those already vulnerable populations." Read that again, because it is closest the researchers come to your flat assertion that vaccines will kill people. Have you read your study, or just the abstract? If not, go read the study you cite. It is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8160119/
    Last edited by welch; December 1st, 2021 at 07:14 PM.

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  18. #94
    Senior Member dneal's Avatar
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Read the OP, welch. You’re completely missing the point of this thread.
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

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    Senior Member dneal's Avatar
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Does this "difficulty" speak for you, and not for those of us who answered your question easily and directly above?
    No difficulty on my part, but perhaps for those who insist on presenting false analogies.
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

  20. #96
    Senior Member welch's Avatar
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Quote Originally Posted by dneal View Post
    Read the OP, welch. You’re completely missing the point of this thread.
    You have asserted but not demonstrated that the vaccines kill people. You keep repeating your assertion, and then leaping into a discussion of utilitarian social ethics, as if the world is parading behind Jeremy Bentham, James and John Stuart Mill, or Henry Sidgwick.

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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Quote Originally Posted by welch View Post
    Thanks, Welch. I read it. It is interesting how the report uses different language in the summary from in the body itself. It's actually not a study of cause and effect at all. They simply count how many persons died either the same day as the vaccine dose or the same week. There is no suggestion that the death is caused by the vaccine. They are only associating the deaths to the vaccine by proximity in time. Yet, then, in the summary, they call it an "estimation" of a Covid vaccine "death rate," which has a whole different implication.

    Curiously ambiguous and ambivalent.

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  23. #98
    Senior Member dneal's Avatar
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    Quote Originally Posted by welch
    You have asserted but not demonstrated that the vaccines kill people.
    Holy shit. Seriously? How do you want me to "demonstrate" it? Get a bunch of the vaccine and administer it until one dies?

    Here it is though. The "demonstration" from my own link that you keep saying I need to read. The link I quoted, bolded, underlined and italicized; with you still missing it. If this isn't sufficient, then nothing is.

    Image 12-1-21 at 8.47 PM.jpg

    Quote Originally Posted by welch
    ...leaping into a discussion of utilitarian social ethics, as if the world is parading behind Jeremy Bentham, James and John Stuart Mill, or Henry Sidgwick.
    "Leaping"? It's the point of my OP. It's why I posted it. It's a perfect example of utilitarian ethics, put into practice. Of course no politician has the nuts to actually do this, but the bone-headed morons will certainly claim it in some irrational virtue-signal of "compassion", "follow the science" and other nonsense. Then, like their bullshit "lockdowns", they'll start listing the exemptions/exceptions.

    I'm just pointing out the ethical theory behind it, and the logical consequences. Again, this isn't hard to understand - although you seem awfully challenged with it.


    --edit--

    So my wife just pointed out the possibility that you're being a pedant to the point of asserting that there is no proof of a causal relationship between the vaccination and the deaths reported in VAERS after vaccination. Enter David Hume and his argument against causation, but ok. I will then point out that you can't prove that COVID killed anyone. It was the pneumonia, blood clot, etc... that killed them. COVID would be, by those pedantic standards, completely non-lethal. A mortality rate of zero. It never killed anyone because you can't show the causal relationship.

    If that is how asinine of an argument you intend to make, I might have to take a page out of TSherbs' playbook and stop discussing it with you.
    Last edited by dneal; December 1st, 2021 at 08:24 PM.
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    @dneal, we have responded and others have read your document to point out that what you think is flawed regarding vaccines.

    I suspect the reason you chose to avoid a free vaccine is not because you're biased against the science, but maybe the scientists and a government you think is over reaching. While you didn't vote for Trump, given your listening to Bannon et al, I suspect you've allowed yourself to buy into the divison these people have accomplished. I don't fault you for this because I bought into Rush decades ago because he sounded like he had the answers. He was a fraud, a do nothing, a "shit stirer".

    No one is forcing you to do anything regarding the virus. If you look up the Moderna vaccine on the CDC website, you'll notice a hypersensitivity profile and ingrediants profile. If a person is suseptible, they would be excused from receiving the vaccine. There are opt out provisions for the Biden mandate. Don't let yourself make Fauci and Biden bad people for trying to help. They might be bad for other reasons, but not this time.

  25. #100
    Senior Member welch's Avatar
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    Default Re: Vaccine mandate ethical dilemma

    dneal, it appears that you have still not read the article you cited, or that you misunderstand what you read. You have repeatedly selected a sentence from its abstract, but have you read the details? Have you read the researchers' discussion?

    They do not claim that the vaccines kill people. They report data. They do not report a diagnosis. You slipped your own assumptions onto their data, and misrepresent what they reported.

    I have read Hume, and like him. Hume's point about cause is irrelevant to what medical doctors routinely do when they diagnose a malady and prescribe a treatment. Hume does not claim that we, in ordinary life, should jump off the George Washington Bridge on the expectation that the fall will not cause us to be flattened when we hit the water. Hume is simply challenging something inside a tradition of philosophy. We assume cause in all sorts of things, and we have to.
    Last edited by welch; December 2nd, 2021 at 12:30 PM.

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