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COVID: 100% Vaccination Is NOT the Goal
Or at least shouldn’t be.
Reducing the spread and/or seriousness of the disease is the goal. Vaccines appear to be a tool that helps toward that goal. Yet the rhetoric about Covid vaccine mandates now treats vaccination itself as the goal. So confusing the goal and a tool intended to help achieve that goal keeps people and organizations from seeing other tools that might be useful to achieve the real goal, and causes people and organizations to pursue the tool regardless of whether it continues to contribute toward the goal.
I have often seen in the corporate world employees and departments get so focused on a particular tactic used to achieve a company goal that the employees come to think of the tactic as the goal, and lose track of what the real goal is. Besides becoming blind to possible alternatives to achieve the real goal, they get so wedded to the tactic that they fail to consider whether the tactic is still contributing to the goal, and run the risk of continuing the tactic even if it no longer contributes to the goal.
With respect to Covid, I fear that so many have become wedded to the tactic of 100% vaccination that they have lost sight of whether other tactics might be useful, and they are not considering whether the tactic is really accomplishing the goal of reducing the spread or seriousness of Covid. Natural immunity is being almost completely ignored. Treatments of the disease are being almost completely ignored. Health issues that suggest the vaccine could be high risk for some people are ignored by many of the vaccine demands. Employers and schools with populations at extremely low apparent risk of serious Covid consequences (the young and healthy) fail to consider whether vaccination will really reduce the spread or seriousness of the disease within their populations, and refuse to consider any balancing of the very low apparent risk of the vaccine with the very low apparent risk of the disease itself. 100% vaccination has become the goal.
If we could keep our eye on the goal of reducing the spread and seriousness of Covid and treat vaccination as A tool that seems to contribute to that goal, rather than treating vaccination as the end goal itself, we could have much more useful public discussions about how to achieve the real goal. Unfortunately, too many people and organizations in government, media, and corporate businesses have become wedded to vaccination as the only tool they will consider, and thus 100% vaccination has become the goal, instead of reducing the spread and seriousness of the disease itself. Thus, such useful public discussion of the goal of reducing the spread and seriousness of Covid no longer seems possible.
Published in Healthcare
Every reason for not getting vaxxed is valid, and your thoughts on the matter are irrelevant.
Well, that doesn’t make it your “business.” Unless you figure you’re somehow paying for it.
In the case of Covid, It does become my business when demands are being placed on me because there’s a virus that might kill a fat person.
In the case of Obamacare, obese people become my business because of the cost of their healthcare, which I as a taxpayer would bear
Oh I see what you mean. I was only thinking about the Obamacare situation involving cost. But yes, they do seem to be claiming that everyone is at the same risk of covid as obese people who have other problems too, as in the past when the alarms were that everyone had equal risk of getting AIDS.
Fair enough. Let him be irked. I’m mildly irked, too. I’m irked with the people I care about who won’t get vaxxed for reasons I think are nonsense, and I’m irked by a government that continues to operate with a heavy hand. But I’m powerless to do anything about it except rant and rave like an impotent jerk. ;-)
Joe Biden, apparently. But it shouldn’t be him. It should be each of us.
And of course, you fell into my trap. If each of us decides, then it’s not a medical decision, or about medical issues. It’s really just a personal decision, as it should be.
I fell in no trap. That has been my position from the start.
I’m not sure how that makes it not a medical decision. I had the need to get a crown recently. I had the dentist look at the tooth, he suggested I get a crown. You don’t need to but it’s just going to break more and cause more trouble down the road. No government mandate. Not employer mandate. Nothing. But it was a medical decision to have it done…
A decision was made on a medical issue, but you didn’t really make it for a medical reason, you made it for a cost reason, or a convenience reason…
And that’s why a personal decision on vaccines is not really a medical decision either. Or at least it doesn’t have to be. Because that gets back to whether someone’s medical decision is “correct” or not. And that’s where you get to, who decides? Someone who says I don’t want the vaccine because I’m concerned about the x% whatever it is risk of getting myocarditis. Someone else – maybe a doctor, maybe a government official, maybe just an employer – looks at that and says “that risk is too low to justify not getting the vaccine” and so therefore – to them – it’s not a “medical” decision.
But if the person making the decision doesn’t have to follow that, then I claim it’s not really a medical decision at all. It’s just a personal decision, and it doesn’t matter whether they base it on their own understanding of the medical aspects – even if every doctor in the world might say they’re wrong – or if it’s a religious thing (and if they’re Catholic the Pope might say they’re wrong, but it doesn’t matter) of if they say it’s because the moon is made of green cheese.
It’s a personal decision, period. A personal decision on a medical matter, but still a personal decision, not a medical decision.
I can’t say I agree with your distinction here. But I am also not sure it matters.
Well if something is a “medical decision” then to some that means medical experts get to make it. Perhaps over your dead body.
Just for fun, let’s argue this out a bit.
Now in my case I had a broken tooth. There was risk in not getting the crown. It could break further. It could get a cavity.
Now if I didn’t have good medical insurance, and couldn’t afford to have the work done, I might decide not to get it done because I couldn’t afford it.
But all of that is a “medical decision.” It’s a decision I made about a medical issues, taking in to account various factors.
How do you define “medical decision”?
A medical decision as a decision based on medical facts alone, would involve only risks of the procedure versus possible infection from the procedure itself (e.g., sometimes people get infections during dental procedures that can lead to heart issues) and so on. Once it gets involved with insurance or ability to pay cash etc, then it’s at least partly a financial decision. Especially if you end up not getting it simply because you can’t afford it, in which case it might be considered a 100% financial decision not a medical one. Yes, it’s still a decision ABOUT a medical thing, but the decision was not based on medical issues.
A cruder example might be if you want to buy a red car but the only red car they have is more than you can afford. Then you’re not making a decision on the color of the car, which would be a “car decision,” it’s a financial decision.
I’m amused by the angst some have about the reasons various Americans have for not taking the vax. It’s almost as if liberty, as intended, doesn’t require the lowest of bars…”I don’t want too.”…as sufficient. But that’s just me…
Yes, that’s a personal decision, rather than a medical decision, even if it involves a medical “event” of some kind.
It shouldn’t amuse you much. My dad is 81, in poor health. The COVID vaccine will almost assuredly prevent him from having serious illness should he contract COVID. He won’t get the vaccine because he has bought in to the nonsense people say about the vaccine. But it’s his decision.
My angst isn’t about agreeing nor disagreeing with his decision. It’s about what might be the consequences of that decision.
I think you are splitting hairs…which if taken literally might be a medical issue…
It’s not a zero chance that someone aged and in poor health, might have a side-effect from the vaccine that could be fatal for someone in that weakened state, even if the side-effect might not be critical for someone in better health. There might be similar concerns from covid itself, but that’s only IF he gets covid. Getting vaccinated guarantees 100% exposure to the vaccine.
It’s not really splitting hairs if you acknowledge that a decision about a medical issue, for example, might very well be made for reasons other than strictly medical. Such as finance, religion, what-have-you.
That the ability to comply with the demand is under your control is without doubt. And I find the people who make that argument tiresome (I know you’re not making that argument). Because the demand itself is dangerous. Who I vote for is under my control, also. Who I donate money to is under my control. The church I attend is under my control: What’s the big deal? If you want to rent in this building, you just have to change your vote/church/party/donations.
If they can force you to take medicine you don’t need, they can force you to do anything. Notice the pivot to the climate emergency lately? Guaranteed, if we go along with this, it will be demanded that our grandchildren get abortions “for the greater good”, and “to save the world” because of a “climate emergency”.
I’ve had kids in the military, so obviously I do know people who were threatened with firing if they didn’t get vaxxed. But in the general society, I know many Scottish people who had to get a TB test before working in childcare. The only reason I know is because they all tested positive (something to do with the vax they received in Great Britain cause them to test positive)
Also, I’ve had to show vax records for my kids to attend school. I have no idea what would have happened if I refused to show the records, or didn’t have them.
We’ve been all over that ground already. We disagree.
Tell me that you understand why I would have angst about my father not getting the vaccine. Tell me that you understand that. If you don’t understand that, even if you disagree with it, then…I don’t know what to say. It sure the hell isn’t “amusing”.
My point is that where we are now with these vaccine mandates is new territory for most of us…
I’ll suggest the military is slightly different. You asked to join (that is, I did) and in so doing you agreed to all crap they do to you. The vaccine part is the least of your problems. ;-)
Sure I can understand it. But what if he got the vaccine, especially on your say-so, and something went wrong?
Maybe not, if you’re a lawyer or a cook or something.
The problem is that liberty does have limits in severe circumstances. During war, certain restrictions can be made, with the assumption that they will be removed when back at peace. Same with a legitimate pandemic, like if we had a massive outbreak of MERS or a viral hemorrhagic fever like Ebola – quarantining people is crucial in these cases.
The Wuhan virus mandates fall down because the disease is not particularly deadly outside of certain populations. “I don’t want to” is enough for this case. The other examples just explain how it is even more unreasonable.
Indeed. If the wuhan virus was nearly as deadly as originally claimed, you wouldn’t need a mandate. People would be waiting in line for it
I never said the number with natural immunity was small. I said those who have medical conditions that preclude them from a vaccine is small. You misread. Were people getting AIDS walking around in public? I fail to see the similarity.
This was answered in Henry Racette’s post, which you participated. You should remember. See my comment #46, and then further down where Jerry Giordano supplies numbers to how much more likely (6-7 times) you are to spread Covid if you are unvaccinated. This was part of my answer:
Well it’s not an exact match, but there was a period of time when the AIDS transmission method was not widely understood, and then after it was there were many in the media and government who insisted that everyone had equal risk, which was BS.